


Enough to Go By

by engmaresh



Series: Baavira Week/end [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Angst, Baavira Week 2018, Backstory, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Flirting, Humor, Mild Sexual Content, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Romance, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Sexual Tension, pre-season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-15 20:37:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16940301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engmaresh/pseuds/engmaresh
Summary: The course of unifying an empire never did run smooth.Seven days, seven stories. Written for Baavira Week 2018.





	1. how they shine for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their first night out from under the domes of Zaofu.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt _stars_.
> 
> Title very obviously from Coldplay's _Yellow_.

“I can’t believe you volunteered to take the first shift,” Baatar grumbled as he handed Kuvira her bowl of rice and stew. “You’ve been leading this whole thing, and now you’re still working.”

She took the food from him, and stabbed hungrily at a piece of moo-sow. “It’s because I’m leading this is why I’m taking the first watch. I can’t just drag everyone out here and then do nothing.”

“Do nothing?” He threw himself down on the ground next to her and immediately regretted it when it turned out to be much harder than expected. Earthbenders. They always managed to make rock, dirt and metal seem cozy. “You’ve been the brains and the driving force behind all this! We’d still be talking around in circles back in Zaofu if you hadn’t decided it was time to leave.”

“You sell yourself short,” Kuvira said, looking up from her bowl. A grain of rice stuck to her upper lip, but she licked it off before Baatar could give into the urge to brush it away. “We wouldn’t have gotten as much support from the Xins and the Jis if it hadn’t been for you. And I’m still amazed you managed to get Sifu Wu and his family to come too.”

“We all want to do something.” He leaned back on his elbows and tilted his head up to the sky. Stars, a rare sight for him at this time of the night, twinkled down at them, but the moon was hidden behind a cloud. “I still can’t believe we’re out here, doing this.”

Kuvira set aside her bowl and tugged her braid over her shoulder, brushing the tip of it under her chin. Baatar knew her long enough to recognize it as a nervous tick and nudged her gently. “What’s wrong?”

“Are we doing the right thing?” she asked lowly, her brow knit with doubt. “I know we have the intel Su received from Raiko, and we’ve got supplies, but Ba Sing Se is in total chaos. I’m just going to get everyone killed.”

Baatar sat up. “Look–” he began, when he was interrupted by a sudden commotion from the camp.

They leapt to their feet, fists at the ready, but it was just Varrick, stumbling out of his tent with a giant plume of smoke billowing after him.

“Everything’s under control, relax, just a little bit of a mishap with a steamer. Zhu Li, do the thing!”

His beleaguered assistant crawled out from her own smaller tent, and disappeared into his. After a few moments, the smoking stopped, and the grey cloud surrounding his tent diffused.

Varrick beamed at the circle of disgruntled people around him. “See, nothing to worry about.”

“If the bandits discover us, Varrick,” Kuvira warned.

“We have guards! We’re surrounded by an electrified fence I haven’t quite finished testing yet!” Varrick’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. “And we have you, Captain. We’ll be fine!”

Kuvira’s lips thinned, but she didn’t say anything else as Varrick crawled back into his tent.

“Now I know you’re tired,” Baatar said, turning back to her. “You would have chewed him out any other time.”

“It’s not that,” she said, brushing her chin with her braid again. “He’s no longer under contract with your mother. If I push him too hard, he might leave. He’s Water Tribe, what stake does he have in our fight?”

“He wouldn’t leave,” said Baatar. “He’s too crazy for that.”

Kuvira huffed a laugh. “What does that make us?”

“Loyal and dedicated citizens of the Earth Nation. ”

Her laughter came a little louder. “I should put you in charge of the propaganda.” She drew her hand across the air, as though envisioning a banner. “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s nation.”

“Ugh,” Baatar made a face. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

He sat back down and patted the ground next to him. Kuvira joined him, her legs folding under her, graceful as always. Looking away from the circle of their encampment, he could see the faint glow of Varrick’s experimental electric fence surrounding them.

Beyond the fence were the airships, and beyond that, nothing but darkness. He shivered, and rubbed his arms.

“You cold?”

“No…” He turned his gaze up to the sky. A gust of wind must have blown the cloud away because the full moon beamed down upon them. “Look,” he pointed. “We have Yue’s blessing for this.”

Kuvira tilted her head back, her eyes following direction of his outstretched arm. “You believe in that?”

“Not really,” Baatar admitted. “But sometimes it’s nice to think about.”

She sighed, leaning back on her elbows, and tipping her head up to the sky. “I haven’t seen the stars in so long. It drove me crazy sometimes, to be out at night, and to look up only to see those ridiculous domes. I wonder how anyone can stand it.”

“Force of habit.”

“Fear and complacency,” she said. This morning, before their departure from Zaofu, she’d yelled the words in his mother’s face. Now they were sad.

“One day we’ll go back and there’ll be no more domes,” he promised. “Zaofu won’t need them anymore.”

“Mmm,” she murmured absently, her gaze fixed on the night sky. “I think I—look!”

She pointed. Something bright streaked through the darkness.

“A falling star?”

“Yes! And it’s fallen in the direction of the Four Advisors! Great opportunities await, they will help you make your case to the Dragon Emperor.”

Baatar turned to her. “You believe in that?”

She scowled, but in the bright light of the moon he could see her blush. “It’s...when I was very young.”

“Oh.” He knew she didn’t like talking about her past. “You don’t have to tell me.”

But she drew her legs up to her chest and the words kept coming. “My grandmother, she told fortunes. She’d look at the stars and tell the farmers when to plant the crops, when the best time was to marry, what sky a child was born under and what its future would be.”

“And?” Baatar prompted, curious despite himself.

Kuvira shrugged. “I believed it. Sometimes. When they came true. And when they didn’t it was just proof that the old beliefs were wrong.

“She died when…I don’t know how old I was. It was a particularly harsh winter. I didn’t really care after that. But when I was…” Her braid was back in her hand, the tail brushing over her chin and lips like she was hoping to sweep the words back in. “When I was alone, I remembered. She said the snout of the Black Lion Turtle always points west. He is looking for the first Avatar. So I went west until I came to Ba Sing Se. And then Su found me.”

Baatar looked up at the sky. It was easier than looking at Kuvira, who was trying to casually wipe her sleeve across her face. “Which one’s the Black Lion Turtle?”

“It’s too early for him. He appears in the fall, once the leaves turn.”

He narrowed his eyes at a particularly bright star. “That’ll be you one day.”

“What?” Her eyes were dry when she looked up at him.

“There.” He pointed. “Look at that cluster. That’s you, metalbending.”

“It doesn’t look like anything, Baatar.”

“You’re not looking at it right.” Grabbing her hand, he pointed it at the group of stars. “That’s you, see?” He drew outline of a triangle with her finger.

“It’s a triangle.”

“It’s your uniform.”

“Right.”

“And that–” he traced a wavy line moving away from the triangle. “Those are your metalbending cables.”

For a few moments she peered up at the sky with him. Then she snorted, pulling her hand back. “Opal’s right. You’re such a dork.”

“I’m telling you,” he said with a grin, “One day they’ll be looking up at the sky, and they’ll tell stories about Kuvira. She walked the Earth Kingdom and united all the lands.”

Kuvira laughed. “I _walked_ , huh?”

“It’s called artistic license, have you never talked to Huan?”

“And what about you?” She stuck him with her elbow and pointed. “There, that one looks like you!”

“That’s a stick!”

Kuvira smirked at him. “Yeah, that’s definitely you.”

“You know, if I’d wanted abuse, I’d just have stayed back ho—in Zaofu.”

Her smirk faded into something softer. “It’s okay. It’s not going to stop being home right away.”

“I know. I wish...that some things worked out differently. But I don’t regret this.” He looked down at her hand, next to his. Underneath his fingers, dirt, soil, earth. He couldn’t hear it hum the way she did, but there were other things he could do, now that he had the freedom to do so.

“We’ll make it,” he said, smiling back at her. “After all, the stars are in our favor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** The [Four Advisors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Advisors) are a real asterism (stationary pattern of stars) used in Chinese astronomy, and they really are “supposed” to be able to help you if they land in your astrological house.  
> The Black Lion Turtle is the [Black Tortoise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Tortoise), and his journey westward to find Wan is a broad reference to _Journey to the West_.  
> Ancient Chinese emperors supposedly used variations of Feng Shui and other forms of geomancy and divination in their governance and military. And while I believe Kuvira would be too “forward thinking” and technologically focused to actually utilise such systems, I like to think the folks of the Avatarverse are still prone to such cultural superstitions, just like us when we knock on wood, or blow on a eyelash, or wish upon a star. :D


	2. these graces that hold me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parenting is hard, being married to a "mad" engineer is harder.
> 
> For the prompt _parenthood_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Vienna Teng’s _Daughter_.

The patter of bare feet and Baatar’s shouted “Amika!” was all the warning Kuvira got. Locking her elbows and tightening her core, she braced herself as fifty pounds of child scrambled onto her back. She winced as a toenail scraped across her bare calf. Time for a trim, it seemed.

“Drop and give me twenty!” her daughter yelled, way to close to Kuvira’s ears for her comfort. She settled herself cross legged in the small of Kuvira’s back and grabbed onto the straps of her tank top.

“Hold on,” Kuvira warned, then lowered herself slowly. One. Two. Three. Her muscles burned. Four. Caught in her daughter’s iron grip, the neck of her top was beginning to choke her. Five. Six. Seven. Amika swayed, threatening to upset her balance. Eight. Nine. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Baatar approaching. Ten. Eleven.

“Oh, for the love of—” Amika’s weight was lifted from her back. Kuvira inhaled deeply and powered through nine more push-ups before she lowered herself carefully to the floor, pressing her face to the cold tile.

“I think you’re getting too old for this,” she mumbled at the floor.

“I’m not getting old!” her seven-year-old crowed from somewhere above her head. " _You’re_ getting old!”

Rolling over onto her back, Kuvira looked up at her husband and daughter. There was a distant look in Baatar’s eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He shook himself. “Nothing. Just having flashbacks to that first week when you tortured me.”

For a second her blood ran cold, bright purple spirit vine energy filling her mind’s eye. She blinked furiously, and then remembered. “That wasn’t—that was _training_.”

“I was sore for the entire first month!”

“Because you’d never done the tiniest bit of exercise before leaving Zaofu,” she retorted. Baatar held out a hand and she let him pull her to her feet, laughing when Amika ran around and gave her a little boost from behind.

“You two are back early,” she remarked. “What happened?”

“The test worked, so I decided to make it an early day and sent everyone home.” Despite the fact that she was sweaty and probably smelled like a moose-lion, Baatar wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “It’s been a while since I got to see you work out.”

“Mmmm,” she smirked, turning to meet his lips with her own. “You know, you could always join me.”

Baatar made a face and shook his head. “I like my soft, cushy life as it is.”

“Dad likes being soft and cushy!” Amika piped up, and poked her father hard enough in the gut that he grimaced.

“Please, Kuvira, take your daughter.”

“Oh, she’s _my_ daughter now, is she?” said Kuvira, crouching so that Amika could scramble onto her back, where she clung like a monkey lemur and stuck her tongue out at her father.

“When she spends the whole day poking her nose in my work, breaking my tools—yes you did, yes you did—” he said as Amika chanted “No, no, no,” in Kuvira’s ear.

“And when she’s asking me to make things blow up, then _yes_ , she’s very much your daughter.” Baatar booped his daughter on the nose, then Kuvira, though he followed up the second one with another kiss. “I’m going to take a nap.”

He walked off to their bedroom. Kuvira looked over her shoulder. “Did you really break your father’s tools?”

“Maaaybe?” said Amika, her face a picture of innocence. “It was an accident. And it was dad’s fault for not putting it away properly.”

Kuvira pursed her lips. “Did you apologise?”

Amika heaved a deep, exaggerated sigh. “Yes, mom. And then I helped dad fix it.” She began to wriggle, and Kuvira slowly crouched down again so she could slide off her back.

“Can I come to work with you next year, mom?”

“Well, my work’s not very interesting—”

“But you work with Auntie Korra!” Amika began running around the room, her torso leaning forward while she windmilled her arms. Kuvira wasn’t sure if she was pretending to airbend or if she was mimicking one of the new bending forms.

“I don’t always work with Korra.”

“Then you have to ask her to come! Pleeease!” Amika jumped onto the sofa, but after a pointed look from her mother, jumped right off it again.

Kuvira began unbinding her wrappings from her hands and wrists. “I can’t ask the Avatar to come visit just because you want to see her.”

Amika skipped over and began wrapping her own wrists with Kuvira’s discarded bandages, only to succeed in tangling them together. “But dad called her today, and she’s coming tomorrow.”

“What?”

“Yep!” said Amika, nodding vigorously. “He called after the spirit vine test succeeded.”

Kuvira stormed off to the bedroom, still trailing cloth from her left wrist, her daughter scampering after her like an excited kitten. “Baatar! BAATAR!”

Her husband jackknifed upright as she opened the door, already alert. It was one thing that hadn’t changed from their three-year campaign, despite the years that had passed since then. He jammed his glasses back on his face. “What’s wrong?”

“You forgot to mention that Korra is coming by tomorrow.” Him being in bed gave Kuvira the chance to loom over him for once, and she took full advantage of it, crossing her arms and squaring her shoulders.

But Baatar was used to her intimidation tactics. Assured that they weren’t under attack, his shoulders relaxed. “Oh right! Sorry dear, I forgot.” He smiled up at her, a little sheepish.

“Is it about the tests?”

“Well, yes,” he began, then fell back with an _oomph_ as Amika plowed into him. “Sweetie, mom and dad are talking.”

“I’ll be quiet!” Amika promised. “Just…” she held up her hands, now bound together by the tangled bandage. Baatar sighed and set to picking them apart. Kuvira, meanwhile, gave up on looming, and sat down at her vanity across from the bed.

“Anyway,” he began again, “though I’ve been allowed to resume my work on the spirit vines, I’m supposed to alert the Avatar about any breakthroughs I have. In case, you know, they might be weaponized. Again. By me.” He smiled crookedly at her.

Kuvira groaned, dragging her hands through her hair. “You should have told me about that before you called her.” Her fingers caught on a snarl, and she began tugging. “I don’t have any reports ready, and Governor Chu still hasn’t gotten back to me yet about—”

“Kuvira. Kuvira,” Baatar got out of bed, gently pulling her hands away from her hair. “Deep breaths.”

Kuvira closed her eyes and inhaled. She felt Baatar lean over her, heard him take something from the vanity. Brush bristles ran gently over her hair. “She’s here to check on my work, not yours.”

A full body shiver ran down her spine and she slumped back against him. “You know Korra, she’ll drop by and pester me anyway.”

“You mean she’ll just commander the kitchen, cook stewed sea prunes, laugh at us as we pretend to enjoy them, spoil our daughter, and ask about how you’re doing.” She could feel him carefully work over the tangle, brushing it free. “Everything will be fine.”

She took another deep breath, exhaling forcefully through her nose. “Yes, you’re right.”

“You okay, mama?” Small hands crept into her lap and she opened her eyes. Amika’s wrists were still wrapped together, now tangled even more since her father’s attempt to unbind them.

“Yes, sweetheart,” Kuvira assured her, unwrapping the last of her own bandages and dumping them on the vanity. “I’m fine. I just…” she chewed her lip, unsure about how to express to her young daughter the roiling mix of guilt, anger, anxiety, and annoyingly abject gratitude that surged up in her every time the Avatar dropped by on her check-ins.

Luckily Baatar came to her rescue. “Your mother and Korra once had a big fight and your mother still feels bad about it.”

“Oh,” said Amika, holding up her bound hands. Kuvira began searching for one of the loose ends to untangle her. “Was that when dad built you the giant mecha and you trashed Republic City?”

Kuvira tensed. “Who told you that?”

“Hanak!”

Catching Baatar’s eyes in the mirror, Kuvira made a face. Hanak was Korra’s eldest, but he reminded her very much of former Commander Bumi, who had overseen her for a year of her sentence. An hour in his presence was as exhausting as a day full of fighting drills.

It was somewhat unfortunate that Amika liked the boy so much. “And I told him dad isn’t allowed to make mechas anymore, and you help build cities now! Like this one!”

Guwei wasn’t quite a city yet, but since that was something she was working on, Kuvira decided not to correct her.

Amika went on. “When I become the Avatar, I’m going to build the biggest city ever!” She began bouncing with excitement as her vision took shape. “It will have aaaall the elements! It’s going to be on a volcano that floats on spirit vines over the sea!”

Baatar chuckled. “That’s not how the Avatar cycle works, sweetheart. Or spirit vines.”

Kuvira began to tune him out as Baatar went on to explain the physics of spirit vines to their daughter. The abstract physics concepts of his work often went over her head; she worked better with other kinds of numbers, the ones that took better shape in her head. Back then it had been armies, now it was just a lot of statistics. She closed her eyes and allowed their chatter to wash over her. Amika’s hands finally slipped free of the bandages and she scurried over to her father.

“Want to help braid mama’s hair?”

“Yes!”

As two pairs of hands began working on her hair, grounding her, Kuvira closed her eyes and slipped into a light meditative trance. She was all right. They were all right. And Korra’s visit was going to go just fine.

 


	3. we keep living anyway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Relationships are complicated, especially when there's a third party present, in the shape of an empire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt _fears_.
> 
> No exact timeline, but imo this takes place towards the end of their campaign's second year. They’re definitely not engaged yet.
> 
> Chapter title from _Hamilton_.

Broaching the subject while they were both in bed probably isn’t going to be her best decision. If anyone ever asks—though they’d know better than to do so—Kuvira is going to blame exhaustion and painkillers. But the words from Aarif’s report are swimming in front of her eyes, and every breath still drags up the choking taste of ash in her mouth. At least she can breathe without pain now, though the carefully dressed burn on her arm still throbs despite the medication.

“We need a plan, should I ever be killed.”

“What?” Baatar turns so fast she swears she can hear his neck crick. She winces in sympathy, and at the giant ink scar he’d scratched across his careful schematic of an ore refinery in his alarm.

“It's only reasonable, Baatar.” Kuvira caps her pen and closes the cover on her earmarked report. She sets them aside on the collapsible chair she has commandeered as a second bedside table, seeing as the built-in shelf next to the bed is already overflowing with papers and reports. At some point, probably soon, she’ll have to find the time to move them to another location before they fall on her in her sleep. “After today’s close call, I realised I should have done this sooner.”

Baatar rubs his neck, scowling down at his marred diagram. “Well, as second-in-command—” he begins, in a matter-of-fact tone that she can tell is very much _not_ matter-of-fact.

Kuvira inhales deeply, then flinches as something grates inside her. “No.”

“What do you mean, _no_?” The roll of paper and his pen slide off his lap as he throws his hands up in the air.

She resists the urge to put her head in her hands. Displaying exasperation isn’t going to make things any better. It’s a sign of weakness, if anything. And Baatar can recognize them better than most. Spirits, is it frustrating to work around his ego. Especially when he can generally be rather reasonable—with her anyway—about his work. Sometimes she wonders if this knee-jerk defensiveness about his abilities is some kind of complex he’s developed from working under his father for so long.

“With all due respect, Baatar, and I really mean it,” And she does, with every fibre of her being, when he’s not being a complete ox-ass. “Everything you have done during campaign so far, your work on the mechas and the train, your help with the rebuilding—”

Baatar crosses his arms. His brows caterpillar together over his glasses as he scowls. “Get to the point, Kuvira.”

He is right. She’s rambling, and that’s not something she’s prone to doing. Bringing this up with Baatar has been a mistake. But the subject has to be broached, and she doesn’t trust herself to address it in the morning, after she sleeps away the shock and wakes up, alive and breathing, ready to fight another day. It’s getting easier to forget now, the losses and the pain. After all, what use is it to linger? Grief and pain only serve to hinder her efficiency, but no matter what others may think, she’s not yet so arrogant as to believe that the responsibilities of the empire can rest on her alone. So she goes on. “You lack the skill, experience, and quite frankly the interest for leadership.”

It’s her honest opinion, not meant as an insult. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, everyone has their place in the machinery of the state. But of course Baatar can’t see it that way, has to take it all personally. “Is that what you think?” he asks, pushing off his side of the blanket and rising to his knees. “That I’m content to remain in the shadows? That’s why I left Zaofu in the first place, because I was never allowed to lead.”

“Don’t twist my words, Baatar!” Kuvira snaps. Irritation nags at her like an itch and she digs her fingers into her thighs to resist the urge to warp metal. This is Baatar’s dirtiest weapon against her; that she’s behaving like his mother, stifling his creativity, restricting his output. This is the accusation he brings up when he _wants_ a fight. It’s the bit of him that’s Suyin rearing its ugly head: stubborn, hypocritical, self-obsessed. Turning him against her when she’d been the one to set him free. It wasn’t as though he’d had the backbone to leave on his own.

Irritation turns to anger and sudden burst of adrenaline rushes through her. “This is nothing like leading an engineering project,” Kuvira shouts, “ _Nothing_! Negotiating terms, military strategy, distributing resources, sending our people into battle _to die_!” She throws back her blanket and climbs out of bed. It feels ridiculous to keep sitting in it anyway, pretending like it’s a perfectly normal night. And she appreciates the height and authority standing gives her, especially when Baatar’s being an emotional idiot.

“Can you do that? Can you, Baatar?” She pushes on, hands unconsciously curling into fists. “Can you fight next to our people, can you _die_ next to our people?”

“You know damn well I can fight!” Baatar snarls, and now he’s on his feet too, his discarded diagram crunching under his feet. “But if I’m not good enough for you, then who?” He throws his hands up in the air. “Bolin? I know you’ve been looking to promote him.”

Kuvira snorts. Any satisfaction at his concession is marred by the deliberately ridiculous suggestion. Bolin’s a good kid, but no leadership material. And he doesn’t deserve to be dragged into this argument. She’s not going to play Baatar’s stupid game. “No, he’s too young, too naive. I’m thinking someone along the lines of Sergeant Liu.”

“Sergeant Liu.” Baatar’s eyes bug. “That ancient—”

So maybe she _is_ being a little petty, but she does have the prerogative. And Liu, for all his old-fashioned beliefs and habits, is an effective leader. “This is not the time to let your ridiculous grudge get in the way, Baatar.”

“My what?” An angry flush has started crawling up his neck. He crosses his arms. “My ridiculous _grudge_?”

“Yes.” She stabs a finger at him. “Sergeant Liu has proven to be an excellent tactician, he is brave, charismatic and the troops love him.”

However much he resembles his father, the disdainful look that crosses Baatar’s face is entirely Beifong. “His reticence to use technology to our advantage will not help our cause.” He sweeps his hand at the various diagrams and plans that litter his side of the bed and the floor. “Your goal is to modernise the Earth Empire as we unite all the states. How will putting a technophobe at the head of the army help with that cause?”

“Fine, do you have any suggestions?” Kuvira starts pacing. Anger and adrenaline demand that she move, even if the narrow strip of space between the foot of the bed and the wall of their cabin is barely a few paces long.

“Captain Aarif—”

“He’s half Water Tribe. The people would never accept him as their leader.” This kingdom, this _empire_ , is still too new. Captain Aarif is a good man and a loyal soldier, but the people need familiarity. The stability of earth.

“What about Sergeant Li?”

“After today?” When bandits had somehow broken past his guard and blown up a refinery, killing two of her troops, as well as three civilians, and wounding eight others including herself. Her mouth tastes of ash again and her anger is momentarily clouded by the scent-memory of burnt flesh. “No way.” The only thing she can see in Sergeant Li’s future after an inquiry is a discharge, if not a stint at one of the reeducation camps. He’s lucky she hadn’t dropped him on the tracks.

“Arrgh,” Baatar groans at the ceiling as her runs his hands through his hair. Without pomade to slick it back, it spreads out limply over the top of his head like a dead spider-rat, a thoroughly unattractive look. “Fine! Varrick!”

“Dammit Baatar!” snaps Kuvira, and slams her fist into the side of the cabin. It leaves a sizeable dent that she’ll have to fix later. She’s tired of this stupid argument, and maybe it’s her fault for bringing it up, for letting it devolve into this petty disagreement. “Take this seriously!”

“I am taking this seriously!” he roars. For just a second, Kuvira’s frightened by his vehemence. He’s never taken this tone of voice with her before, and after the day she’s had, it puts her on edge. It takes her several moments to realize she has unconsciously slipped into a defensive position, the disassembled components of her pen and Baatar’s hovering around her hands like metal insects.

“Shit,” Baatar mutters. His eyes flick back and forth between her face, the pieces of metal and the door. She wonders if he thinks she’s going to use them against him, if he’s considering making a break for it. For a brief second, she does have the tempting idea of clapping a piece of metal over his mouth and shutting him up for the night. The thought immediately fills her with shame and disgust, and she releases her control over the metal pieces. They fall to the floor with little _pings_.

“I’m sorry,” she says, the exact moment the same words blurt from his mouth. “I—”

She pauses and gestures at him. “Go ahead.”

Baatar shakes his head. “You first.”

“Of for the love of—” She rolls her eyes in irritation. “Say what you have to say.”

“Fine!” he snaps. Then his anger seems to evaporate entirely. Like a brief drizzle in the Si Wong desert, like it’s never been. “Just don’t die,” he says. His voice cracks on the last word and he slides his hand under his glasses to cover his eyes. She hopes he’s not crying, hopes that he just can’t stand to look at her. “Don’t die. We need you. _I_ need you.”

The feeling those words invoke in Kuvira is a familiar one. It’s that moment of freefall in a dance, when she fails to grab onto the rope, and her only option is to land as well as she can on the firm padding below. Helpless. Su swinging past gracefully above her, a rueful smile on her face.

She pushes away the feeling. It’s already bad enough that Baatar’s falling to pieces; her leaking emotions all over the place isn’t going to make anything any better. “Please tell me you don’t actually mean that,” she says flatly.

Baatar inhales deeply and removes his hand. He’s thankfully dry-eyed, though he looks as pathetic as a kicked fire ferret. “I don’t expect any promises,” he says. “I know we don’t have the luxury. But I just want you to know that I’m scared—”

“And you think I’m not?” she interrupts him angrily. His sudden shift towards sadness is frustrating when a part of her still wants to rage. Besides, his moping is ridiculous considering _she’d_ been the one almost killed today. “Screw you, Baatar. Do you think you’re the only one who’s scared? I’ve almost died many times over the past year, some you _don’t_ even know about!”

“I—”

She cuts him off. “No. You listen to me! You have no right to demand this of me. This _thing_ that we’re doing, uniting the Earth Kingdom, helping our people, building a stable, sustainable empire—it demands sacrifice. From all of us. And you know I would never ask anything of my people that I’m not willing to do myself.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Baatar says heatedly. “You’d throw yourself on the tracks if it served the empire. Which it wouldn’t. You dying serves no one. And as you’ve so astutely pointed out,” his tone turns dry, “I’m hardly Great Uniter material. So what good will it do anyone if you’re dead?”

Kuvira closes her eyes. They’re arguing in circles. Why had she brought this up again? The chain-of-command. Their lack of it. And now they’re back to her dying because it seems she hasn’t been reminded of her mortality enough today.

What little is left of her anger drains out of her, leaving her tired and shivery. Breathing too deeply has started to hurt again, which means the painkillers are wearing off. She sits down heavily at the edge of her bed and puts her head in hands, refusing to look up even when Baatar nears and sits down next to her. She doesn’t want to open her eyes and see the look on his face.

She feels his hand on her leg. His thumb rubs small concentric circles that dip into her inner thigh. “I love you,” he says, and his other hand pushes the hair away from her face so that he can press his warm, dry lips to the skin beneath her ear. Day-old stubble brushes her hand as he turns away. Then he gets up and walks out of the room.

Inhaling deeply, Kuvira falls back against the mattress. It makes her ribs twinge, but the pain’s a good distraction against the tears that prickle the corners of her eyes. It’s ridiculous. Sometimes it feels like she’s the only one of the two of them who can see sense. For all Baatar’s scientific reason, beyond the realm of mathematics and physics, he’s as over-emotional and irrational as everyone else.

Kuvira taps her heel against the floor. Lightly, just enough and just in time to feel a door slide shut. She pinpoints the reverberations to Baatar’s old cabin—looks like he’s decided not to sleep here tonight. Now that they’ve made their relationship official and there’s no more need for sneaking around, he uses it more as office and a workshop, but it still has a bunk and all the amenities. That’s where she goes looking for him sometimes, when he doesn’t show up to bed.

Seeing that she’s sleeping alone tonight, she might as well make full use of having the bed all to herself. Yet Kuvira finds herself rooted in place. It’s the adrenaline crash, she thinks, on top of the crazy day she’s had. Exhaustion weighs down her limbs. Turning off the light, even though it would only require moving the metal components in the switch, feels like too much work, so she keeps her arms draped over her face. Her feet still hang off the bed. Despite the chill of the floor radiating through her bare feet, the faint hum of the engine is soothing.

She dozes off then, or something like it. Thoughts keep churning in her head, ideas, strategies, but they feel like they’re being formulated by someone else, like she’s half-listening to a lecture. Varrick disturbingly features in a number of them, always trailed by an efficient, stone-faced Zhu Li. Baatar is there too, floating in and out of these scenarios. Sometimes Suyin appears, looking on with disappointment.

Kuvira’s partway through a treaty with Raiko and Suyin—who in a horrifying twist has stolen the Avatar’s body and put her own head on it—when the bed shifts beneath her. She sits up, instantly alert, and narrowly avoids smashing her head into—

“Baatar!”

“Hey,” he says quietly. It’s hard to see him in the dark; he must have turned off the lights coming in. The stabbing pain in her chest from her sudden movement drags her further into wakefulness and she squints up at him.

“I thought you went back to your own cabin,” she mumbles.

“I did,” Baatar says, and despite the dark she catches a hint of his rueful smile. “But I missed you.”

Kuvira groans. “You know it's annoying when you’re mushy and sentimental.”

“That’s why I do it,” Baatar says, and she lets him push her hair away from her face and kiss her.

Their reconciliation is a relief, and the intimacy is comforting. She hates that she has become so needy for his affection of late, but she puts it down to the stresses of her position. If she wasn’t feeling half dead with exhaustion, she’d try to push the kiss into something more, something that would help her feel human again. Baatar must notice, because he pulls back and cups her face with his hands, brushing his thumbs across her cheeks. “You should sleep.”

“Was sleeping,” she grumbles, turning so that she can climb properly into bed. “You woke me.”

“You were muttering in your sleep,” he says, moving over to his side of the bed. She hears the shuffle of papers as he puts away his diagrams and drawings. “Nightmare?”

Kuvira tries to remember the dream and fails. “I guess,” she says. She lies back, and unexpectedly finds herself subject to Baatar in full nursemaid mode. Plumping her pillows, giving her his second one for her ribs and offering her a glass of water he seems to have pulled out of nowhere.

“Stop it,” she finally groans as he tries to tuck her blanket in around her. “I’m not a child, just get in.”

There’s a hint of a smug smile on Baatar’s face as he slides in next to her, and she smacks him on his arm for it.

“What was that for?” he whines.

“Being a stubborn ox-ass.” She wriggles over to him, using the extra pillow to prop up her back. Conveniently, her injury has corresponded to their respective sides of the bed, which means she can rest her head on his shoulder, though it requires some shifting on his part.

Baatar lets himself be maneuvered, though he gasps and squirms when she slides her feet between his calves. “Your feet are cold.”

“Then warm them up.”

He snorts, and turns so that he can press a kiss to her cheek. He misses.

“That was my eye.” She leans over slightly so that she can kiss him back and scores the corner of his mouth.

“You know I can’t see anything without my glasses.”

“I know,” she murmurs, sliding her hand down the side of his face. “You have no idea how it drives me crazy, it’s such an easy way to incapacitate you.”

Baatar lets out a gusty sigh. “Well, good thing then that I’m an engineer, and not a soldier.”

“Death doesn’t discriminate,” Kuvira says quietly. She slides a hand under his shirt, tracing a raised scar in his side. There’s a matching one in his back, where the rebar had gone through and through. Several inches of steel; the closest she’s ever come to ending her campaign. Baatar doesn’t know. It’s not something she’ll ever allow to happen again.

“Yeah,” says Baatar. “I’ve...I’ve made a list. Of people.” He drapes his arm over her waist and she feels his warm, work-roughed hand splay against the small of her back. “We can go over it in the morning. Once you’ve rested.”

She presses a kiss to his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“And Kuvira?” He pulls her a little closer, but gently enough as to not hurt her ribs.

“Mmmm.”

“I just want you to know…” He sighs again, sending her hair fluttering across her face. “I don’t ever want to lose you. I’m not asking for any promises. But I just want you to know that.”

The dark is a relief, hiding the tears that make it past her closed eyes. “I love you too,” she says, glad her voice doesn’t break on the word. “To the ends of the empire, or something sappy like that. And I don’t know what I’d do without you. That work for you?”

Baatar’s low chuckle reverberates through them both. He’s so warm. “Hmmm,” he says, as she starts to drift off, “as long as I come second, that’ll do.”


	4. A Girl from Ba Sing Se

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baatar picks up a girl in Ba Sing Se.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt _dance_.

“Baatar. You can’t let them see me, Baatar.”

The street was empty and there was no one in sight, but Kuvira still said the words like she was afraid someone was about to pop out from a doorway or behind a cart at any moment. It was hard to walk with her stepping on his heels every minute or so, and Baatar was pretty sure he was going to find bruises from her fingers on his arms the next day.

“Why not?” He tried to twist free, tired of being marched around like a human shield and after several tries, succeeded. Looked like that self defense practice with the troops was finally paying off. Even drunk, Kuvira had a grip as strong as iron.

“Look at me!” She stopped short and gestured at herself. “It’ll be bad for morale.”

Baatar rolled his eyes. “They won’t even know it’s you.”

Kuvira huffed. “I hope so.” It did look like she’d gone out of her way to be unrecognized. Gone was the severe bun she’d started putting her hair up in. It was back in the braid she kept in Zaofu, though he wasn’t sure if the hair that kept falling over her eyes was meant to be a part of the style or a way to hide her beauty mark. The makeup around her eyes was smudged, probably intentional too. She wasn’t even wearing green, and the yellow blouse and long, pleated skirt were a far cry from the uniform she wore daily. She could’ve passed for any girl from Ba Sing Se.

“You look nice,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

Kuvira shrugged expansively, swaying a little into him as she started walking again. “I needed to blend in. Not be me. Zhu Li picked out the clothes.”

“Well, she made a good choice,” he said, then gasped as she jogged him hard with her elbow.

“Don’t get used to it. They’re just a disguise.”

He massaged his ribs as he made a face. “You’re mean when you’re drunk.”

“I’ve been told I’m mean when I’m sober too. So with one’s true?”

“Both?” Baatar ventured tentatively, unsure if there was a right answer. He flinched when she swayed into him again, but this time it turned out she just want to link her arm with his.

“It’s not my fault,” she complained, leaning her head against his arm. “I have resting mean face.”

Baatar frowned, thinking hard. It wasn’t like Kuvira smiled a lot—and over the past few months there’d been little to smile about anyway—but mean wasn’t what he thought about, looking at her. But he also had to admit he was incredibly biased in that regard. Now Aunt Lin, _she_ had a resting mean face. Baatar wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her smile.

“Well, do you want to smile more?” he asked carefully. It felt like he was wading into dangerous territory here.

“No,” she said shortly.

“Then don’t,” he answered.

She sighed deeply. And maybe it didn’t mean anything, the sigh, because she said nothing after that, but he couldn’t help but feel like his answer had let her down somehow. Or maybe it was all just the alcohol.

They turned a corner and found themselves in a square. There were a few people still awake here, drunks, or maybe just delinquent teens, it was hard to tell, hanging out by the dry fountain as they passed a bottle back and forth. They looked up as the two of them passed, but otherwise remained silent. Nothing to see here, Baatar thought, putting an arm around Kuvira’s shoulders. Just two people walking around at night.

“You’re tense,” Kuvira remarked, as they turned away from the square. “Expecting trouble?”

Baatar shrugged, but he left his arm where it was. If she had a problem with it, he’d know. “Not really,” he admitted. “But better to be safe, especially with you like this. Ow!”

“I’ll have you know I’m perfectly capable of defending myself,” Kuvira said flatly. She held her elbow at his ribs the way she’d hold a blade.

“I wasn’t worried about you, I was worried about them. Remember the last time you metal bent while drunk?”

“I was sixteen!” she said, her tone wounded. Her elbow dug in again, but this time he was quicker. Intercepting her with his hand, he slipped his arm off her shoulder and pushed her away to the other side of the street. She gave an exaggerated gasp, pretending to stumble and fetch up against the wall, but Baatar wasn’t fooled.

“You walk there.” He pointed to the ground beneath him. “I walk here.”

Kuvira’s hair had fallen into her face again, but it couldn’t hide the dangerous glint in her eyes, or the smirk that curled her mouth. Baatar had just enough time to curse before the pavement rolled over his shoes, trapping his feet and legs up to the knee. Then the entire block he was standing on shifted over, moving through the ground like it was water. He wobbled, and the stone around his legs crept up his thighs to steady him.

Then it came to a stop. “Hey,” he said, and gave her a little wave, because there really wasn’t anything else he could do. Kuvira must have sunk the earth he was trapped in into the ground a little, since he now found himself eye to eye with her.

“Say that again about my metalbending.” Her voice was flat, but they were close enough that he could see the corner of her mouth twitching.

“That’s not metalbending,” he said, giving her a smirk of his own. “That’s earthbending. Besides,” he looked behind him at the broken pavement slabs and the churned up dirt beneath, “You’re breaking your own rules.”

As she continued to fake a scowl at him, he held out his palm. “That’s a hundred ban fine for the destruction of public property.”

The ground beneath him shot up, and the rock around his legs crumbled away, all so suddenly that he stumbled. Kuvira caught him by his elbows. “You’re lucky I like you.”

“You mean you’re lucky _I_ like _you_ ,” Baatar said, dusting himself off as she went about repairing the road. Broken chunks of paving stone trailed after her in a weird parody of turtle ducklings chasing after their mother. “If anyone else had asked me to pick them up after a night of drunken revelry—”

Kuvira snorted. A pulling gesture with her fist made the chunk of earth he’d been standing on slide back into place. Then with the same sharp, efficient motions she used with her metal bands, she put the broken chunks of paving back. Baatar assisted in his own nonbender way, kicking stray pieces of rock in her direction for her to manipulate. Finally, she smoothed it all down, sliding her slippered foot over the previously broken bit of road. “There,” she declared, hands on hips. “Good as new.”

“Fantastic,” Baatar said drily. “Now before you tear up the rest of the city, can we go?”

“Fine.” She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him along, and Baatar, completely nonplussed, allowed himself to be led. The affection was unusual, though maybe in Kuvira’s mind, it was simply a matter of efficiency. That is, if she knew where they were going. The roads and alleyways were unfamiliar to him, though the flag that marked their headquarters remained in sight, rising above Ba Sing Se’s green tiled roofs, so at least they were still heading in the right direction.

Kuvira wasn’t even walking properly, instead moving along in half-skips that involved kicking her legs out, performing little hops and stomps that seemed to shift her weight from her heels to her toes, all the while humming a rhythmic song under her breath.

And because she still held Baatar’s hand, it made for somewhat uncomfortable walking, since he’d find himself jerked along for a bit as she moved away, only to fetch up against her back as she stopped to do some confusing, on-the-spot footwork that he could only half make-out due to the length and volume of her skirt.

“Were you out dancing?” he asked, as she some did some kind of half-twirl that brought her an arms length away, before reeling herself back in.

“Me? No.”

“Then what’s with the—” he tried to execute a little jig to demonstrate, only to trip over his own feet and stumble.

A laugh escaped Kuvira, but she quickly recovered, covering her mouth and disguising it as some heavy coughing.

“That was terrible,” she remarked, when she was done making fun of him.

“My feet are bigger than yours,” he said defensively, but she just scoffed.

“That’s no excuse. You just think the only way to move is to go forwards, one foot in front of the other.”

“Well, that’s how walking works.”

“But we’re not talking about _walking_.” She linked her arm through his, and started doing that half-skip again, swinging her right foot out, then back in, stomping, then switching to her left foot foot and repeating the whole thing. “Come on, follow me.”

Baatar insistently put one foot in front the other, moving like nature intended him to. “No thanks. Besides, shouldn’t we—”

“Shut up,” she said, hip-checking him hard enough that his teeth clacked together. “Dance with me.”

“Fine,” he sighed. “One...whatever this is. Then we have to get back. You have a meeting with Governor Khan tomorrow.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said, and started humming that song again. “Follow me.”

The steps, Baatar reflected as he dance, swinging out his legs to follow hers, weren’t all that complicated. And the rhythm, for now, was fairly consistent. Out, in, stomp, switch, out, in, stomp. But somehow he still messed up, swinging out instead of in, stomping at the wrong time, wobbling dangerously as he switched from one foot to the other.

“You’re overthinking it,” said Kuvira. “Just move.” At some point she’d slung his arm over her shoulders and put her own arm around his waist to steady him. She was a line of heat against his side, breathing evenly and steadily while his own lungs had started burning with exertion. The simplicity of the dance was deceiving. This was as much a workout as running several miles.

“Come on,” Kuvira chided, “the basics are easy.” She did some kind of sideways leap that shifted her whole weight against him, drawing her feet up under her. He instinctively clamped his hand down on her shoulder, and for a moment that and her arm around his waist were the only things that kept her up in the air. Her breath was hot in his ear, and he swallowed hard as she spoke. “If you can’t keep up, I should probably fire you.”

She dropped back to her feet and spun away, releasing her hold on him. Baatar let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “I’d like to see you explain that to the troops. ‘He couldn’t dance properly. So I fired him.’”

Kuvira did another skip, another twirl, and from there flowed into movement he recognized from her fighting style. “Every good warrior knows how to dance,” she said, sounding like she was paraphrasing someone else’s words. His mother’s, perhaps? The kata she executed looked flawless to his untrained eyes, but now he recognized the elements of dance in it, the way her balance shifted easily from one foot to another, how her arms moved with fluid yet decisive grace.

It made him regret, for a moment, never having taken up his mother’s offer to teach him martial arts when he was younger. After all, she’d worked with benders and nonbenders alike, she would probably have known what to do with him. He wondered briefly what it would be like to fight next Kuvira, if their bodies were in tune as their minds or ambitions.

“A ban for your thoughts.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing. Thinking of could’ve beens.”

Kuvira gave him a shrewd look. “Those are dangerous.”

“I know.” She’d stopped dancing, so he reached out and took her hand. “You still haven’t told me where you went.”

“Oh,” she gave an off-handed shrug. “It was a cultural showcase. I happened to see a poster about it somewhere.”

Baatar frowned, trying to remember if he’d seen anything like that over the past days. At the city hall? A police station? A restaurant? “I didn’t know they had these kinds of things here.”

“It’s a large city, Baatar,” said Kuvira, an undercurrent of impatience in her voice. “People here come from all over. This dance happens to be from the southeastern part of the Earth Kingdom, near the southern Air Nation islands.”

“And they’ve brought it all the way to Ba Sing Se?” He tried to recall if he’d seen anything similar in Zaofu. “Nice.”

“That’s what I want, Baatar,” said Kuvira. “Our nation, united. So that everyone can see what we have to offer, all of us, from every corner of the Earth Empire, not just powerful states like Zaofu and Ba Sing Se and Gaoling.”

Her spine straightened as she spoke, her gait changed. Soon they were going to reach the compound that housed the officers from their army, including themselves. But for now, she still held his hand. He squeezed her fingers. “It will happen, Kuvira.”

She didn’t say anything, but she squeezed back too.

When they were a block away, Kuvira ducked into an alley, dragging him along. They’d pulled back the guard over the past few weeks, reducing posts to the entrances of buildings. Kuvira believed the city had calmed down enough for that to serve as a sign of confidence and trust, and judging from the peaceful streets tonight, she’d been right. Baatar watched in surprise as she stripped off her blouse and skirt. Less surprising was the undershirt and military trousers she’d kept on underneath.

“You were really going the whole way with this disguise weren’t you?” he remarked, as Kuvira licked her thumb and started rubbing away the black on her eyelids.

“I’m just a girl from Ba Sing Se, out to have some fun.” The tone of her voice was sing-song, but sober. Baatar suspected she’d been sober since before she’d started dancing.

“But did _you_?”

“Did I what?”

“Actually have fun? You as...” he gestured at her, “yourself.”

She gave him a small smile. “Yes. It was nice, to get away for a bit. Be someone else for a while.” She kept rubbing away at her makeup, but with only her thumb it was just getting worse.

“Here, let me,” offered Baatar, pulling out a handkerchief that was thankfully free from oil stains and anything else. Instead of taking it from him, Kuvira tilted her face towards him, offering. He hesitated, and she flushed suddenly, turning away and snatching the handkerchief from him.

“Well, I’m glad you had a good time,” he said lamely, as she wetted the cloth between her lips and brought it to her eye, still turned away from him. He wondered if it was his cue to leave. His escort mission seemed completed, she didn’t need him anymore.

“I haven’t been a stranger in a while.” Her voice was low when she spoke. The one eye he could see was now free from makeup. “It’s nice to be among people who don’t recognize you, who don’t have any expectations.

“And don’t get me wrong.” She looked up, and the Kuvira who looked at him with determined green eyes was the one he’d gotten to know over the past six months of their campaign. “I don’t fear those expectations. They’re necessary. But—”

“It’s nice to not feel them for a while,” he finished for her.

She gave him back his handkerchief, nodding. “Thank you for walking me back. And sorry if I was being...silly.”

“Well, it least it’s just me,” he said, giving her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, and not some kind of grimace.

“Oh Baatar.” She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I don’t know if I’ve ever told you how much I appreciate you being here.”

“It’s…” he shrugged. “We have a plan. A goal. And we’ll see it through.”

“Yes.” For a moment she swayed forward, but then seemed to think better of it. Stepping back, she removed her hand and bundled her clothes under her arm.

“I’ll see you in the morning then, at the drills.”

Baatar made a face. That would mean about four hours of sleep.

Kuvira caught the look, and glared. “You’d better be there.”

Clicking his heels together, he gave her a snappy salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

She sniffed and turned on her heel. “Goodnight!” he called after her, and she responded with short wave.

Baatar watched her go. His room was in another building; at Kuvira’s insistence they’d been housed separately to ensure the safety of the chain of command in case of an attack. He wondered what the guard at her building thought when they saw her. Maybe they’d assume she’d been out on a run, or at a top secret meeting. He wondered what excuse to give to his own guard.

“I’ve been out dancing with a stranger,” he murmured to himself. “Just some girl from Ba Sing Se.” Then he had to laugh at the absurdity of it all. What a strange, strange night. Heading to his building, he absently attempted a step from the dance. Swing in, swing out, stomp, switch. This time he managed without tripping.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** I’m using _ban_ instead of _yuan_ as the currency of the Earth Kingdom/Empire, because them sharing currency with the UR didn’t make sense. The name _ban_ is from the official ATLA comic, _The Rift_ , where it’s the currency used in an Earth Kingdom town.
> 
> Kuvira’s dancing an incredibly bastardized version of the dabka.


	5. Balance of Power

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuvira is a direct, efficient leader who just wants run an empire effectively. Baatar is her second-in-command, who wants her to communicate better (and for Varrick to not steal his stuff). Together, they fight...each other...again.
> 
> For Baavira Week Day 5, for the prompts _bad habits_ and _jealousy_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically Kuvira and Baatar fight and make up part II, and can be seen as a follow-up to [we keep living away](), though it can also stand on its own. Follows the timeline of that fic too, so this would be maybe around the beginning of their third year? Still not engaged yet.
> 
> This chapter is rated Mature for female presenting nipples.

Someone on the other end of the carriage slammed a door with great force, and Kuvira sat up a little straighter at her desk. With a socked foot, she stomped down on the metal floor and immediately gained a better insight to what was happening. Footsteps moving her way—Baatar’s, judging by the length and stride. Lighter shuffles of feet as people got out of his path.

It gave her enough time to put on her gloves, jam her feet back into her boots and to tuck any stray hairs back into place. Any papers scattered across the desk were gathered into slightly more orderly piles. Image, she believed, was important, even if it was Baatar, and from the sound of it, he wasn’t coming to her in the role of a fiancé anyway.

By the time the door burst open, she was every image the Great Uniter, bent diligently over her work as the weight of her duty, the heavy iron map of the Earth Empire, loomed over her shoulder. She didn’t deign to look up until he marched right up to her and slammed his hands on the desk.

“Baa—”

He cut her off. “Varrick is moving his things into my lab. Is this something you asked him to do?”

“Yes,” Kuvira said irritably. She flicked her pen at his hands, trying to make him remove them from her neatly organized “done” pile. It was a woefully low stack, which was probably why he’d chosen to express his ire upon it. Any other pile would have toppled. “We need the space. Besides, you two already work together.”

Baatar swatted her hand away and slammed his fist down again. “It’s  _my_ lab.”

“It’s _my_ train.” She punctuated it with a none too gentle poke of her pen, and this time succeeded in evicting his hand. He pulled it back with a wince. “That carriage fits sixty people, there should be enough space for the both of you.”

“Not with his ego and his ridiculous experiments!” He shook his fists as though the very thought of them inspired him to violence.

“What about _your_ ego?” Kuvira couldn’t help but ask. She laced her fingers together under her chin and studied him through her lashes as he continued to gesticulate wildly. This argument—a tantrum, really—was a culmination of various petty grievances Baatar had reported against Varrick over the months; she’d been wondering for a while when it would come to a head.

“You don’t have to work with him! He leaves his tools all over the place, is constantly shouting for that assistant of his to _do the thing_ —what even is the thing?” Baatar threw his hands up as though as someone—the ceiling, or the sky, or some unseen spirit—could answer that question for him. “Nobody knows! And he never stops talking!”

He turned back to her. “I cannot work in these conditions!”

Kuvira snorted. “Don’t sell yourself short. You worked out of a half-collapsed basement in Ba Sing Se during our first week there.” He’d managed to do quite a lot of good there too, fixing up tanks and rigging improvised explosive devices they’d used to mine various gang-controlled sectors. Maybe it would be worth it to try replicating the conditions. She’d found that she worked better under pressure too.

“That’s not the point! I need the space!”

“Why?” she asked, and rose to her feet. She noticed how Baatar mirrored her slightly as she did, pulling his shoulders back, moving his hands to his sides. Behaving more like the second-in-command that he was, rather than some kind of mad scientist like Varrick. “You’re not working on any more mechas. All your current projects are in collaboration with him. Shouldn’t it be more efficient to share space instead of running between carriages the whole time?”

Baatar let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Can’t you see what you’re doing? This is why I—”

Oh spirits, she already knew where this was going. “Don’t you dare compare me to your parents,” she snapped. “I am _not_ your mother, and you are too old to complain about having to share. I made this decision as your commanding officer, and if you have a problem with it, then you will go through the proper channels, instead whining at me like a child!”

He was standing very straight now, at attention like any proper Earth Empire soldier, rigid as a board. “Very well, _Commander_.” He snapped her a mocking salute. “I’ll make sure to do just that.”

The door to her office couldn’t be slammed, but Baatar knew exactly how to use that to his advantage, leaving it slightly ajar. It shook and juddered in its frame for several minutes, sliding back and forth until Kuvira lost her patience and bent it shut.

She sat back down, pulling off her gloves and flexing her fingers, already putting the argument out of her mind. Baatar would get over it, he always did in the end. And she really had to get back to reading and signing off on another stack of orders and directives.

Then the door slid open again, as she looked up, startled. But it was only Varrick. She frowned to herself, annoyed at being caught off-guard. If only she could figure out how he moved so quietly sometimes for one so noisy. Though she did still have her boots on, and it was always harder to feel the vibrations through metal through the heavy soles.

For the second time in less than a hour, Kuvira found herself marched up to. At least Varrick spared her work, and didn’t slam his hands down on her desk. Instead he splayed them wide, then pulled at his already wild hair. “I absolutely cannot work under these conditions, Kuvira.”

“What conditions?” she asked, voice flat, already knowing what was coming.

“My lab!” He tugged his hands out to the side, making his hair stick out like wings. “You’re making me move in with your boytoy! This is ridiculous, my lab is my sacred sanctum, only to be intruded upon by me! And Zhu Li, of course,” he added with an upraised finger.

“My boy—” Kuvira began incredulously, then thought better of following that line of disagreement. “No! I’m not listening to this again.” Getting to her feet again, she curled her hand into a fist. Varrick’s pauldrons tightened on his shoulders. In an outward motion like a slow punch, she starting pushing him towards the door.

“But Kuvira,” Varrick wheedled. “Oh, Great Unit—ow!” He wriggled as the pauldrons tightened a little harder on his shoulders.

“You can share the carriage, or you’re both getting nothing!” Kuvira ordered, making sure even someone like Varrick could hear the finality in her tone. “Now get out!”

One last jab of her fist sent him reeling backwards through the doorway. With a quick flick of her wrist, she slid the door shut. Another triggered the locking mechanism. For a moment, there was no movement, then she both heard him and felt the minute vibrations through the ground as he stomped away.

Exhaling loudly through her nose, she turned back to her stack of work, just in time to see the “unfinished” pile wobble and slide off her desk. Papers clacked against the floor, spreading far and wide, and Kuvira felt a surge of relief that she hadn’t left the window open. Airbending would come in handy now, she thought, as she stooped to gather up the errant documents. Maybe she could look into a way of pinning them together with small metal clips or staples.

Or maybe she could just get an assistant, she mused as she piled the papers back on the desk. She bent several strips of metal from her backplate into a solid brick, placing it as a weight on top of the documents. Perhaps someone like Zhu Li; smart, quiet, efficient. Or she could just steal Zhu Li away from Varrick. The woman had to be tired of working for that irritating gnat of a man. Kuvira could offer her a way out from under his yoke. A raise, maybe the offer of a higher rank. After all, what did she have to lose?

Kuvira sighed, slumping down behind her desk. This was what she’d been reduced to, fantasizing about stealing her subordinate’s subordinate. Of course she could just foist some of the administrative work onto Baatar. Though he already had his hands mostly full with engineering and logistics, and trust him as she did, she was leery about sharing certain aspects of her leadership with him. The Empire meant different things to the both of them, and while she could live with that, it meant that there were simply certain things she couldn't depend on him for.

“With great power comes great responsibility, and with great responsibility comes a mountain of paperwork,” she muttered to herself. Kicking her boots off under her desk, she took up her pen and got back to work.

 

* * *

 

Kuvira started when she felt a gentle pressure on her shoulder. Spirits, had she fallen asleep? Something white intruded in her field of vision, and she swatted at it until she realised it was a piece of paper stuck to her face.

Baatar—of course it was Baatar, who else had she expected—chuckled as she examined the document to ensure she hadn’t drooled on anything important.

“How did you get in here?” she asked, looking around him as she wiped at her face, just in case there was anything else on it.

“Picked the lock,” he said simply.

“You can pick locks?” This was news to her. She rose and walked to the door, crouching down to examine the mechanism. Nothing seemed broken or out of shape. She reached out and bent the lock shut, then opened it again, wondering what it was like to do it blind, unable to sense or feel the position and movement of the tumblers.

“Opal and I taught ourselves. You grow up in a family full of metalbenders, along with brothers who think it’s a lot of fun to lock you in your own room, or your workshop, or in the pantry…” Baatar shrugged. “You learn a few things.”

“You never said anything.”

“It never came up. Besides...” He smiled. “You and your metalbenders liked breaking down doors so much, so I figured I’d leave it to you guys.”

“Oh,” said Kuvira, feeling a little foolish. She’d never put much thought into how non-benders worked around their limitations. Since childhood she’d always been surrounded by other skilled metalbenders who used their abilities for a variety of tasks, from the mundane to the extraordinary. When Baatar talked or complained about his family, being a non-bender was not a subject he brought up. Maybe he’d come to terms with it a long time ago, engineering becoming his own way of shaping the world around him.

“So what are you doing here?” she asked. Baatar had already sought to make himself comfortable, and was sat down at the couch where he was flipping through a sheaf of documents she’d signed.

“Bringing you dinner.” He nodded at a covered tray on that lay on the coffee table. The expression on his face turned somewhat sheepish, and he coughed lightly. “And an apology.”

“Oh,” she said, raising an eyebrow. She bent off her armor, then sat down on the other end of the couch. “What comes first, food or apology?”

Baatar leaned over and pushed the tray closer. “You eat, I apologise, how about that.”

Kuvira’s stomach chose that moment to growl. It reminded her that she hadn’t really eaten anything since noon, and judging from dark outside the train, that had been hours ago. “All right,” she said, lifting the cover, and inhaling deeply. The claypot rice with waxed turtleduck smelt enticing, though the accompanying stir-fried carrots aroused somewhat less excitement. Thanks to the cooler weather the northwestern part of the Earth Empire was currently experiencing, they’d had a surplus of the crop, and were currently transporting several tons of it for distribution throughout the rest of the nation. It also meant that it had been the only type of vegetable she’d consumed in several days.

But food was food. She picked up a pair of chopsticks and started to eat.

Across for her, Baatar was still getting started on his apology. He laced and unlaced his fingers, scratched his neck, and ran his hands through his hair until it fell in messy strands over the shaved sides of his head.

“Well, don’t sprain anything,” Kuvira muttered between mouthfuls of rice as she watched him fidget.

“Oh you’re one to talk,” Baatar sniped at her. “It took you two days to apologise for undermining me in front of the governor of Gaoling.”

“That was six months ago! You’re still mad about that?”

“No,” said Baatar, “I’m over it. But it does mean that you don’t get to nag me about this. Especially since _you_ ,” and he emphasized this by jabbing a finger in her direction, “don’t actually have to work with Varrick.”

“I do work with him,” she protested.

“Yes,” said Baatar with an eyeroll. “When you come into the lab and yell at him for blowing something up again. You don’t spend extended periods of time with that man.”

“Well,” Kuvira stirred her rice around in her bowl as she spoke. “By your own admission you’re already working with him on a regular basis. So why so desperate to maintain your own space?”

Baatar sputtered. “Be-because I’m your second-in-command!”

“So?”

“Kuvira…” he muttered, putting his face in his hands. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?” she asked impatiently. She hoped that he would get to the point, because she had no idea why she was now the one at fault.

Baatar raised his face. “Undermining me!”

“Undermining you?” Now it was her turn to sputter. “What am I doing that’s _undermining_ you?”

“Wow.” Baatar’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “You really have to ask?”

Realizing that she was at risk of throwing them at him, Kuvira set down her bowl and chopsticks. “Yes, I really have to ask, because I have no idea why this is all suddenly my fault.”

“Ugh, I’m not saying it’s your fault,” said Baatar, crossing his arms. “I’m just saying maybe you could stop taking away symbols of my authority. Or at least give me a little warning beforehand, instead of marching in and demand that I do what you say as though I was any other subordinate of yours!”

Kuvira looked at him in bafflement. “The lab was a symbol of your authority?”

“Yes!” said Baatar through gritted teeth. “I’m your chief engineer! Your second-in-command!”

“And you have plenty of responsibilities as both!” Kuvira cut in. “What more do you want?”

“Well, maybe a little balance in this relationship for one,” snapped Baatar. He rose to his feet. “The chance to give my own input to a decision, instead of being constantly steamrolled by my own partner!”

“It didn’t require your input,” Kuvira growled back. “We needed the space. I made an executive decision based on the situation and reason. You would’ve just kept it on as your _status symbol_ even if it benefited no one.”

“You could have just told me before! ‘Baatar, I need you to share your lab with Varrick.’ There! Instead you made me look the fool when he came barging in with all his trash!”

“And put up with days of your whining?” Kuvira rubbed her forehead. Whatever had happened to that apology? Next time she was completely sealing her office. Let Baatar pick _that_ lock.

“Well, you’re putting up with my whining now, so you’ve really only just delayed the inevitable, haven’t you?”

“Fine!” she yelled, throwing up her hands. “I’m sorry I’m constantly undermining you and taking away your stuff! Happy now?”

“Arrghhhh,” Baatar groaned, looking up the ceiling. “You know, sometimes I’m not sure if you’re being deliberately obtuse to throw me off, or if you’re so much of a control freak that you really can’t see beyond how things affect you or the empire as a whole.”

He threw himself back down on the couch. “Look,” he began, gesturing at her. “You had a point. The lab is large enough for us both, and the way I complained about it today was unprofessional. But you—” his eyes narrowed as she snorted. “You can’t always cut me out of your decision making. If we’re going to work as, as a couple and as a team, you’re going to have to start delegating. And sharing some of your decisions with me.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Kuvira snapped. The accusation that she was somehow _hoarding_ power stung her. Maybe this might have rung true early in their campaign, when she was still trying to adjust her leadership skills as Zaofu’s captain of the guard to commanding a ragtag militia. And Baatar’s responsibilities had been more engineering focused; modifying vehicles and creating new weaponry. But things had changed, including their duties.

Sighing, she kicked her legs up onto the couch and draped an arm over her face. Maybe Baatar had a point. Hadn’t she considered passing on more administrative work to him just this afternoon? And while she still thought that the whole idea of the lab as some kind of symbol of authority as patently ridiculous, it _had_ been rude and presumptuous of her to drop the news on him by surprise. Had anyone done that to her, she’d have been livid. Sliding further down the couch, she stretched her feet out until she could dig her socked toes into Baatar’s thigh. She felt his hand come down on one of her calves, sliding up under the trouser leg to stroke the bare skin above her sock.

“I’m sorry,” Kuvira muttered. The words felt heavy in her mouth, like talking past a lump of metal. Maybe Baatar had a point there too. “Not about making you share the lab,” she quickly added. “But I should have informed you about it ahead of time.”

When Baatar didn’t respond to her apology, she risked a peek at him from under her arm. He was staring pensively at nothing, though his thumb kept tracing circles on her skin. She waited for a moment, then poked him in the thigh with her toe.

“A ban for your thoughts?” She chewed on her thumbnail. “Or are you not talking to me now?”

Baatar sighed. He slumped back against the couch and ran his free hand through his hair. “When Varrick came back after his meeting with you, he had Zhu Li put a line of tape down the middle of the carriage. I remember thinking how idiotic and childish that was, but then I also realised I was jealous—”

“Jealous?” Kuvira echoed incredulously. “Of Varrick?”

Groaning again, Baatar pulled his hand down his face. “You’ve been paying more attention to his projects of late, and I’m feeling...what am I contributing to this campaign now?”

“The mechas?”

Baatar shook his head. “Modified from Varrick’s design. Which I’m pretty sure he stole from Future Industries.” He looked thoughtful. “I don’t know how he hasn’t gotten sued yet, mother probably pulled some strings.”

“Actually,” said Kuvira, coughing lightly. “That was me. When I wrangled that pardon for him from Raiko. Ms Sato was very generous at the time, I think she understood where we were coming from. I heard that she too had to rebuild something from scratch. That being said,” she slid closer and draped her legs across his lap, “I do think you’ve vastly improved the design and maneuverability. Not to mention you’ve gotten _really_ good at handling them.”

A smug looked flickered over his face, and he turned and raised an eyebrow at her. “Mmm yes, you have made that known several times.”

Relieved that they weren’t arguing any more, Kuvira allowed a small smile to curl her lips. “I must say, you impressed me the first time I saw you fight in one,” she murmured huskily, walking her fingers up his arm and trailing them down the curve of his jaw.

Baatar smirked as he curled an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. “Well, I couldn’t let you have all the fun when it came to fighting.”

“See?” said Kuvira, resting her head against him. “You’re indispensable to the cause. Varrick has the...unusual ideas. He’ll throw anything at the wall to see if it’ll stick. And you, you to take what sticks and make it better. You make it _yours_.”

He leaned down to kiss her for that, his free hand coming round to cup her cheek and tilt her chin up so that she could meet his lips better with hers. Kuvira realised belatedly that she probably tasted of garlic from her dinner, but Baatar didn’t seem to care. He deepened the kiss and she opened up her mouth to him, hooking her arms over his shoulders so that she could pull herself closer.

She ended up straddling his lap, the position giving her a little extra leverage so that she could push him back against the couch. Bringing her arms back forward, she started to work on opening the snaps and buttons of his uniform, cursing herself quietly for its complexity. Sensing her frustration, Baatar huffed a laugh against her lips. His own hand wandered down from her shoulder and under the coattails of her uniform, tugging her undershirt out of the waistband of her trousers to stroke the skin of her back.

“Spirits,” Kuvira muttered, and pulled away so that she could properly attack the closures on Baatar’s jacket; bending took care of the hooks that held close the panel of cloth down the front while her hands worked on the buttons beneath.

Laughing softly again, Baatar got started on her clothes with a little more patience, mouthing his way along the line of her jaw and down her neck as his fingers worked.

“This design is ridiculous. Whose idea was it to put so many buttons on it?” She pushed the jacket off his shoulders and the moment he’d freed his arms from the sleeves, bent it away by the pauldrons.

“Yours. I remember you saying they made a good impression and were a boost for the local economy.”

“Sometimes I say stupid things,” she said, “Isn’t that what we’ve been arguing about all day?” She shrugged off her own jacket and pulled her undershirt over her head.

Murmuring his appreciation, Baatar ran his hands along her ribs, down the tight plane of her stomach, skimming under the elastic of her bra. His head dipped to nuzzle between her breasts, but she pushed him back again so that she had the space to pull off his shirt.

“I’ve ruined you,” she breathed, running her thumb over a faint scar on his shoulder, then following its path with her lips.

“I think it makes me look more interesting,” he said, reaching around to unhook her bra. She pushed it off her shoulders and sighed as his warm, calloused palms slid across her skin, his thumbs slowly teasing her nipples to peaks.

“Besides,” he added, bending down to mouth his way down her neck and chest, “it comes with the territory nowadays, making things that explode.”

“Mmmm,” she hummed, scratching her fingers through the fine stubbly hairs at the nape of his neck, making him shudder. “Something else might explode tonight.”

Baatar’s hands paused on the buttons of her trousers and Kuvira grimaced. She’d regretted the words the moment they left her mouth, but she’d hoped the prospect of sex would make them go over his head.

“Did you just?”

“Be quiet,” she muttered, refusing to meet his eyes as she used her bending to undo his belt. “Just keep going.”

“That was terrible.” He was actually laughing, tears beading at the corners of his eyes. “I can’t believe—”

“Shut up or I’ll stop,” she threatened.

“No, you won’t,” he said with a teasing grin. He pressed a kiss to her mole, then nose, then chin, playfully running his hands up and down her sides so that she squirmed.

She tried to grab his hands and bring them back to undoing her clothes. “You shouldn’t make fun of your superior officer.”

“Oh really?” Another smug, teasing grin, and a raised eyebrow. “What will that get me if I do?”

Kuvira put her hands on his shoulders and tightened her knees around his hips, pulling and shifting her weight so that she could push him down across the length of the couch. He tumbled back, glasses askew, though the smile remained put on his face. Looming over him triumphantly, she ran her hands up and down his chest. Then as she leaned forward and breathed hotly in his ear, she whispered, “Well, why don’t we find out?”

 

* * *

 

Kuvira was dozing, tucked between Baatar’s warm side and the back of the couch when he asked, “Am I sleeping my way to the top?”

“What?” she mumbled.

“I don’t suppose you’ll let me have my lab all back to myself after this.” He hadn’t put his glasses back on, and he squinted as he looked down at her.

“No,” she said, pushing him back down so that she could continue using his shoulder as a pillow. “You don’t get those perks. Besides...” She waited until he’d settled. “You’re already at the top.”

“Not when you are.” He waggled his eyebrows at her and she barked a laugh. “But there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than with you,” he added, pressing a kiss to her hair.

“Ugh,” Kuvira grumbled, “so sappy. You’ll give me hives.” But she smiled anyway, tucked under the crook of his arm where he couldn’t see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** I don't know why I like to make them fight, probably because they're still able to be mature adults about it in the end, even after butting heads and egos.
> 
> Kuvira’s comment about powers and responsibility is of course a reference to Spider-man, but its presence in this fic and the paperwork bit is from sskuvira’s comic, [Kuvira as president](https://sskuvira.tumblr.com/post/169090991925/can-you-do-some-drawing-of-kuvira-as-president).
> 
> Kuvira was going to have water spinach/kangkung for dinner as private joke to myself (because I’m that kind of person, hurr) then I remembered that [carrot](http://lokgifsandmusings.tumblr.com/post/120190928493/lokgifsandmusings-lokgifsandmusings-i-have) [Kuvira](http://callmekuvira.tumblr.com/post/120371821089/am-i-late-to-the-party-kuvira-found-her-carrot-in) [was](http://thesilentpotato.tumblr.com/post/131643766263/i-did-the-thing-lokgifsandmusings) [a](https://sskuvira.tumblr.com/post/120195825880/sskuvira-me-wakes-up-turns-on-computer-i) [thing](http://sokkaspetboomerang.tumblr.com/post/129108810853/remember-that-time-carrot-kuvira-took-over-the).


	6. Deluge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes they're all a bunch of big damn heroes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up being super long, lol. Just wanted to write an action/adventure piece and wet t-shirts. Early drafts included mudskiing.

The rain was still coming down in sheets as Baatar stepped out of the supply tent. He held a hand over his eyes, trying to keep the rain off his glasses but his efforts were futile. The world smeared, grey and colourless before his eyes, and not for the first time in his life, he cursed his terrible eyesight, though he was sure nobody else could see all that well either. He pulled his glasses off his face, and tucked them away inside his jacket. At the rate it was pouring, glasses on or off, it made no difference either way.

He heard, rather than saw another man approaching. The soldier looked as miserable and as waterlogged as Baatar felt. He skidded to a stop, splattering mud, and gave Baatar a hurried salute.

“At ease,” Baatar muttered, gesturing impatiently for the man to lower his hand. He wore the double barred chevron that denoted his rank as corporal. “How much longer until everyone’s evacuated?”

“Last I heard from the operator, sir, they’re still trying to persuade some families to leave.”

Baatar grit his teeth. It was surely that fool Soh and his family, and probably a few others he’d convinced to stay. Had it been up to him, he’d have left them. But Kuvira, stubborn woman that she was, had insisted on staying to save everyone, regardless of the cost. She’d taken a unit uphill two hours ago to try to stabilize the dam.

“What about Kuvira? Anything from her?”

The other man shook his head. “No, sir!”

“How about the refugees?” He gestured to the edges of the camp, where several darks shapes were barely visible through the rain. “Are they settled?”

“That’s what I’ve come to tell you, sir,” said the corporal, head bobbing nervously. “We’re running out of tents.”

Baatar scowled. “What do you mean, we’re running out of tents? I counted them myself, there should be enough of them.”

“Yessir.” The corporal sounded apologetic. “But with the rain, we’ve had several tents spring a leak, three were swept away, and then we had to use several others to patch the leaky ones.” He made a see-sawing motion with his hand. “We’ve tried to redistribute the people to make more space, and we made them leave their livestock outside, but we’re still around two tents short.”

A tent could fit twenty people sitting down. That meant there were still forty people out there, getting rained on. Forty people that were his responsibility now, out in the rain, at risk of falling sick or even getting washed away.

“This army is full of earthbenders,” Baatar growled. “What exactly have they been doing?”

“It’s the rain, sir!” the corporal hurriedly explained. “And the terrain. There’s very little rock here, mostly earth, and every shelter we’ve raised so far has collapsed.”

Rubbing at his temples, Baatar forced himself to think. Give him a broken engine and he could fix it in minutes, and find several ways to improve it. But this, numbers that involved people and logistics, often escaped him. Kuvira had a better knack for it, as well as the patience to anticipate people’s reactions that he frequently lacked. It didn’t help that she'd sent Sergeant Zhuge, to whom she often delegated such tasks in her absence, off with Bolin's party.

He looked around. The camp was temporary and small, set up more as a survey than an actual encampment. Kuvira had hoped to move the refugees out of the area sooner, but Soh and his family had put a dent in those plans, influencing many his village to remain. Only when the rain hadn’t abated after forty-eight hours had the people finally accepted the gravity of their situation and agreed to leave their flooding homes. By that time it’d been too late to bring everyone back to the train, and Kuvira had instructed for tents to be set up to accommodate all the people. But apparently even she hadn’t anticipated the relentless downpour.

“I don’t suppose we could move them?” he asked the corporal anyway.

The soldier made a face, though it quickly fell back into a stoic expression, or as stoic as one could get when one had to keep blinking water out of one’s eyes. “Not without a lot of work. We just managed to get them settled.” There was a desperate look in his eyes, one Baatar could sympathize with. After the organizational disaster this relief effort had proven to be, he wasn’t keen on moving over a hundred people several miles to the train. Not in this weather and not this close to nightfall.

“But we have two trucks, yes?”

The other man nodded.

“What’s your name?” he asked the corporal.

“Batu, sir!”

“Okay, Batu,” began Baatar, reaching up to push his glasses further up his nose before he remembered he wasn’t wearing them. “I want you to gather all children, all elderly and all of the sick and injured who can be moved, as well as all nonessential personnel still here. Put them in the trucks and bring them back to the train.”

“I’m not sure if they’ll all fit into the trucks, sir,” Batu said uncertainly.

Baatar groaned, squeezing the bridge of his nose. Exactly how many children and elderly and infirm were there? “Fine, then just anyone under eight, anyone over sixty and anyone who cannot stand or sit upright. You can’t tell me the whole village is full of children and old people.”

“No, sir,” said Batu, “I’ll make arrangements immediately.”

He hurried off, and was quickly swallowed up by the grey. Baatar headed over to the communications tent to update the rest of troops on the plan. It was only after he’d squished his way into the tent and wiped his face when he realized that he could have held the entire conversation inside, where it was somewhat warmer and dryer. Someone handed him a towel and he took it gratefully.

“No updates yet from the commander,” said one of the officers at the radio, a man named Aarif.

Baatar nodded at him, and took out his glasses, polishing them dry. Kuvira and her people could take of themselves. They’d have to wait for now. “Corporal Batu and several of the men will start moving the children, the infirm and the elderly back to the train. They’re taking the trucks. Anyone here who is not manning a station,” he looked at several men and women clustered in a corner trying to appear suspiciously busy, “help them out. And I’ll need someone to manage the rest of the refugees while they’re gone. You—”

He pointed at a sergeant who had her hair up in a style similar to Kuvira’s. “You’re in charge of organising everyone who remains. Make sure nobody else tries to get onto the trucks, I don’t want them travelling overloaded in this weather.”

“Yessir.” She nodded swiftly and snapped a salute that was echoed by the rest of the group. They filed out of the tent, and after a moment’s hesitation, Baatar followed them out. As dry as the tent was, sitting around and waiting for news from Kuvira and Bolin didn’t appeal to him right now. For several seconds, he entertained the fantasy of riding back to train with the refugees, where it was warm and dry, and the only nuisance he had to put up with was Varrick. But no, he was needed here.

The small camp was in chaos. Churned up mounds of dirt spotted the place, probably the remains of the earth shelters that they’d initially intended for the refugees. The remnants of a collapsed tent lay nearby, water pooling in its folds. Corporal Batu had brought in the trucks, and along with several men and women, was helping the village elderly into the vehicles. That itself seemed to be going all right. But just in front of the truck, a standoff was happening between a woman and a group of men, all in civilian clothing.

“What’s going on?” Baatar asked, striding up to them, trying to sound as authoritative as possible. He gestured for several of his troops to follow. If a fight was imminent, he hoped their presence would serve as a deterrent.

“Why aren’t you letting us onto the trucks?” demanded one of the men. His rough peasant’s face was twisted in a grimace, and he held what looked like a stone pestle in his hand.

“They’re for the children and the elderly, you fool!” one of the women snapped back. She had her arms crossed, and looked ready to fight the Avatar herself.

“Well, I’m elderly!” the man yelled back, and his friends echoed him with cheers and shouts. Baatar scoffed quietly. The man and his rowdy companions looked hardly older than forty, and no one seemed injured or ill.

The woman rolled up her sleeves, looking ready to follow up her words with fists, but Baatar cut her off. “Enough!” he shouted. “Children, the sick and the elderly only.”

“You—” he pointed at one of the men in uniform behind him. “Take them back to their tent. Make sure they _stay_ there.”

“How dare you do this to us!” the man yelled. “First you drive us from our homes—”

“No one’s driven us anywhere, Shugo!” the woman shouted back. “You’re an earthbender too, use your feet! The ground’s more water than dirt!”

Her words made Baatar frown. If the flooding had gotten bad enough that she could feel it down here. “Ma’am,” he said, turning to her as he gestured for the troublemakers to be taken away. “Exactly how much do you think—”

A shout rang out. “Baatar, sir, they’ve returned!”

Baatar whirled around, expecting Kuvira to come marching into the camp, a triumphant smile on her face, the one he’d come to love. But instead it was Bolin who wore the smile, cheerful despite the terrible weather and the scowling old man who trailed after him.

“This is it?” asked the man. Baatar recognized him as Soh, the foolish, cowpig-headed patriarch of the village’s largest family. He looked around disdainfully at the camp, at the dripping soldiers that were helping the rest of his family along, until his gaze finally landed on Baatar.

“Oh it’s you,” he sneered. “Where’s your Great Uniter? Safe in her train while the rest of us drown?”

It took a great deal of restraint to keep Baatar from punching the man in the face. Somehow the past twenty-four hours had made him even more unpleasant.

“Sergeant Yin!”

The woman with Kuvira’s hair ran up to him. “Yes sir!”

“Get Mr Soh here and his family settled in a tent. _One_ tent only, I don’t care how many people need to fit into it. And as with the others, bring any children, elderly or sick back to the train. _Only_ them, and no one else. Understood?”

“Yessir!”

“And you, Corporal...” he snapped his fingers at the soldier he’d tasked with taking the protesting men back to their tent. Their leader had joined Soh’s group, and they were huddled together, talking. Baatar eyed them suspiciously.

“Huang, sir.”

“Corporal Huang, make sure everyone stays in their tents. And don’t leave those two together.” He pointed at the two civilian men. Then in a lower voice, he added, “Use force if you have to, though hopefully it shouldn’t come that.”

Then he turned back to the civilian earthbender who’d been standing against the men. “Ma’am, if you could assist our troops. It might also be better if you rode with the children.”

“Sure thing,” she said, with a small smile on her face, cracking her knuckles in a way that reminded him eerily of his grandmother. He hoped it meant ill for the men, and not the children. “My baby sister and sick father are on that truck. Thank you for taking care of them.”

He nodded in reply, and hurried over to Bolin, who was helping the children onto the second truck. “Bolin.”

The younger man turned towards him, a cheerful smile on his face despite the rain dripping down it. Water had washed all the pomade out of his hair, leaving it dangling limply down his forehead. “Yes, bossman?”  
  
“Don’t—” Baatar began, then sighed. “Never mind. Is Zhuge with you?”

Bolin thumbed over his shoulder. “He’s back at comms. Should I—”

“Come with me,” said Baatar, grabbing him by the shoulder. “We’re going to get Kuvira and her team.”

The smile slid off Bolin’s face, and he clutched his cheeks. “Oh no! Are they in danger?”

“I don’t know,” muttered Baatar, dragging over to the communications tent. “She hasn’t reported back yet, and the earthbender from the village said something that worries me.”

“That the ground’s pretty much turned to mush?” Bolin asked, wresting his arm out of Baatar’s grip. “Yeah, I felt that down by the village.”

“And you didn’t think to say anything?” Baatar snapped.

“Should I have? Pretty sure even a non-bender like you can tell.” Bolin kicked the soggy ground, splattering mud in a wide arc.

“Well, yes,” Baatar said through gritted teeth. “But I can’t tell if that means the entire hillside’s going to come down on our heads.”

“Oh…” Bolin looked down at the ground, and stomped several times with his foot, sending brackish water splashing everywhere. “I can’t do seismic sense. Do you think the dam’s going to break?”

Baatar had been up there to survey the situation yesterday, and with the unceasing rain, it was impossible that the situation had improved somehow. “I think at this point it’s inevitable. The goal now is to redirect the water away from this camp, and hopefully from most of the village once it breaks.”

“This is terrible,” muttered Bolin as they strode into the communications tent. “Losing your home like this!”

Baatar mmm-ed and immediately turned to Aarif. “Captain, any word from Kuvira?”

The other man shook his head as he turned the dial on the radio. “No, sir. We haven’t had anything from them for the past two hours. We think their radio might be broken.”

Baatar groaned. “Fine, we’re going after them.” He beckoned at Bolin and another earthbender, two of the stronger ones from the group. “Bolin, Zhuge, with me.”

“Where’s Kuvira gone?” asked Bolin, trotting up to him, Zhuge close behind.

“She took Tanah, Ayer and Hong Li up to the dam to stabilize it,” Baatar explained as he led them to the supply tent, “just in case you didn’t manage to get that idiot Soh and his family to evacuate. They’ve been away for too long, they may be in trouble.”

He tossed a spool of metalbending cables at Zhuge and hurriedly packed some first aid supplies in a bag. Briefly he considered grabbing a second radio, then dismissed the notion. They were short on supplies here, and in the rain, it probably wasn’t going to work anyway.

“I don’t suppose we have any rain ponchos lying around, do we?” asked Bolin, poking through some crates.

“We gave them all to the villagers,” Zhuge answered, shaking his head. He started taking off his jacket.

“What are you doing?” Baatar asked, pausing in his packing.

“Ease of movement, sir,” Zhuge explain as he belted on the cable spools. “We may have to move fast, and it’s quite heavy when it’s wet.”

“Great idea!” cried Bolin, and went about removing his own jacket. After a second’s hesitation, Baatar took his off too. If the dam did break, they had to be able to move unhindered. It did mean however that he immediately felt the chill of the rain. Though soaked, the high quality wool uniforms retained body heat well.

“We’re not taking any of the mechas?” Zhuge asked as they strode out of the tent with their gear.

“They’re too heavy for this soft ground. And if we get caught in a flood,” Baatar shook his head. “They’re watertight, but I’d rather not risk it.”

Zhuge grimaced, probably at the thought of the grisly deaths Baatar’s words evoked. They marched past the communications tent, to a path that led away from the village, up into the surrounding hills. Just yesterday, the sloped trail had been still been visible. Now it had turned into a tiny stream, water rushing down over their boots as they trudged through it and up into the trees.

The heavy rain eased up under the shelter of the tree canopy, but they had to contend instead with the muddy, slippery trail. The heavy rain had washed up tiny pebbles which skidded under boots, and roots and rocks that would usually provide a secure step or handhold were now slick and dangerous. Almost every other step, Baatar found himself falling to all fours, trying to grab onto a branch or a tree to keep from sliding back down the hill. From the sound of Bolin’s grunting and huffing, he wasn’t faring much better, even with his earthbending abilities.

They soon found that they moved forward most efficiently when Zhuge went ahead, anchoring himself between two trees with his cable. Using the cables as guides, Baatar and Bolin would climb up the slope until they reached the highest anchor point. Then Zhuge would pull himself forward, anchor himself again between another two trees, and they’d begin the process again.

For several minutes, they worked their way up the hill this way, walking and climbing in silence except for the occasional grunt or curse when a boot slipped, or a handhold crumbled under their hands. Everyone was keeping an eye—and an ear—out for Kuvira’s team, and a potential torrent of water. But for the sound of the rain, and the roaring of the nearby river, the forest was quiet. Clearly the animals had been in possession of more sense than humans, and fled the area or sought shelter somewhere where the water couldn’t reach them.

At one point the trail flattened out, curving around the contours of the hill instead of cutting straight up. Baatar took a moment to survey the area again. With the trees a little sparser here, they were getting rained on a little harder again, but it also meant that they could see the river beneath them.

“Ugh,” said Bolin, futilely wiping water out of his eyes as he carefully peered over an outcropping. “After this I vote we spend some time in the Si Wong desert. I’m not even sure if I want to drink water again for a while.”

Meanwhile Zhuge had been a step ahead of them both, and packed a pair of binoculars. “That river’s broken its banks already,” he reported, scanning up the valley. “Good thing we got those villagers out in time, Bo.”

“Which also means we should probably get going,” Baatar said. “At this point the dam’s a lost cause. Which means Kuvira and her team should be on the way down.”

“And if they’re not?” Bolin asked nervously.

“Well,” Baatar said through clenched teeth, hating the way his pulse picked up at the thought of reaching the top to find nothing. “That’s why we’re climbing up this spirits forsaken hill, aren’t we?”

They resumed their trek, Zhuge once again taking the lead. The rain still showed no signs of abating, and Baatar hoped that if Kuvira wasn’t coming down, she’d taken shelter with her group somewhere safe. Maybe they were holed up in a cave or something.

His mind was suddenly flooded with a vision of mud, thick and dense, slipping through his fingers as he dug endlessly, searching. The image was so visceral that he reared back, catching the heel of his boot on a root. Only Bolin’s quick lunge and iron grip around his wrist kept him from tumbling head over heels down the slope.

“You okay, Baatar?”

“Yes, yes,” he snapped, steadying himself against a sapling and shaking the thoughts from his head. Batting away Bolin’s hand and ignoring his concerned look, he pressed onward. “Keeping moving!”

Above them, Zhuge suddenly. “I hear something,” he said. Then, “No, I sense…”

Crashing sounds came through the trees above them, and they looked up, squinting through the rain and waiting with bated breath. Then Bolin whooped. “Kuvira!”

And it _was_ her. Kuvira and her group emerged through the trees, half running, half sliding down the muddy slope. The two waterbenders, Tanah and Ayer, slid down the hill together on a twisting slide of ice. They supported a crude stretcher between them while Kuvira followed behind, using her metalbending cables to swing through the trees.

“What are you doing here?” Kuvira yelled, her eyes widening as she spotted them. She skidded to a halt, splattering Baatar’s company with mud, but when the waterbenders made to stop, she waved them on.

“Looking for you,” Baatar tried to explain, only to find himself grabbed in Kuvira’s iron grip and dragged along.

“Why?” asked Kuvira incredulously. Her hair was matted with mud, twigs and leaves, and she had a scrape on her chin. Like the others of her team, the jacket of her uniform was missing, leaving her in a mudstained undershirt.

“You were gone for over three hours!” Baatar sputtered. “Maybe if you’d radioed in—”

“We lost the radio when Hong Li was injured.” She turned to Bolin and Zhuge. “What are you waiting for!” she barked. “I said keep moving!”

“Back down?” Bolin asked, pointing after the waterbenders.

“Yes!” Zhuge cut in before Kuvira started yelling again. “C’mon, Bo, let’s go!” He grabbed the other earthbender by the shoulder and together they started back down the hillside, slipping and sliding the whole way.

“Whose stupid idea was this?” Kuvira demanded. She reeled in her cables and aimed them at some point through the trees.

Baatar bristled. “Mine! You might have been in trouble!”

“And now you’ve just endangered three more people, including yourself.” Kuvira exhaled heavily through her nose. “Never mind, we’ll discuss this back at camp. C’mon!” She grabbed his arm and pulled, and then they were slipping, sliding and skidding their way down the hill. With him in tow, Kuvira had to forgo the use of her cables, but they made good time, and soon managed to catch up with Bolin and Zhuge.

“If we could make a mud slide,” Bolin was saying as he scrambled over some tall roots, “we could just slide down the hill.”

“No,” said Kuvira forcefully. “No mud slides. I don’t want to risk bringing the entire hill down.”

“But the waterbending?”

“Hong Li’s leg is broken. It was the fastest way to get him down. Less talking, more walking.”

“The dam?” Baatar risked asking.

Kuvira shook her head. Her hair was beginning to slip out of its bun, and looked like the mud was all that was keeping it in place. “A lost cause. It’s going to break, it’s just a matter of how soon. Bolin?”

“Yes!” He attempted a salute, only to quickly put his hand down to brace himself as his feet slipped out from under him.

“Did you get Soh and his family out of the village?”

“Yep! Took us a loooong time to talk him into it, then his wife cracked him over the head, what a fierce lady—”

Kuvira ignored the rest of his rambling, glancing back at the way they’d come down.

“How soon?” asked Baatar.

“I don’t know.” She chewed her lip. “Soon.”

They lapsed into the silence, the only sound once again the incessant rain and Bolin’s occasional prattle. Every now and then, Baatar caught a glimpse of the waterbenders moving down the hillside several yards ahead. He realised they were drawing water from the rain, instead of the earth, probably to prevent destabilising the ground more.

Without warning, Bolin stopped so suddenly that Baatar walked right into him. Their legs slid out from under them both, and they fell to the ground, hard.

“Watch—”

“Shhh!” Bolin put a hand to the ground. His brow knotted. “Do you feel that?”

The dam. Baatar turned to the other earthbenders. Zhuge dropped to a crouch too, hand to the ground, and Kuvira looking back up the hill.

Then he felt it too. The ground was shaking.

“Take shelter!” Kuvira ordered, then launched one of her lines. She shot forward, down to the waterbenders, who also seemed to have sensed something, because their ice slide took a sudden sharp curve.

“Sheltersheltershelter,” Bolin muttered. “What counts as shelter against a giant mudslide?”

Good question, Baatar thought. His first instinct was to hide behind a boulder or large rock, but he didn’t trust that they wouldn’t become dislodged by the deluge and end up crushing them. Climbing a tree was out of the question.

Kuvira and the waterbenders seemed to have come to the same idea, and they came running up the slope again, dragging a battered looking Hong Li. “We passed some trees,” Ayer explained, “with large buttress roots. I think if we shelter behind them and use our earth and waterbending to keep away the mud, we should be safe.”

“Good idea,” said Kuvira. “Let’s go.”

They made a mad dash for the trees, several yards up the mountain. It did look like the best place to take shelter, with buttress roots almost as tall as Kuvira that spread out over a wide area. The benders took up a defensive stance behind the roots, except for Hong Li, who was carefully tucked away, his face white with pain. Aware that he was just going to get in the way, Baatar went to stand by him.

“Are we sure this tree won’t get uprooted?” Zhuge asked nervously.

“I don’t think we have much choice!” said Bolin, who was once again crouched with a hand to the ground. And he was right. Baatar could hear it coming. Wood splintering under the combined weight of earth and water. Rolling down the hill in one inexorable force of nature.

“Brace yourself!” Kuvira yelled, then it was upon them. For one moment, the entire forest was blotted out by a wall of brown, and Baatar instinctively cringed away, reaching for Hong Li’s stretcher in case it got swept away. But the water never touched them.

The combined efforts of the two waterbenders and the three earthbenders kept most of the mudslide away. Occasionally small waves of mud slipped past, rolling over their boots, and Baatar occupied himself with keeping Hong Li out of it. Their rushed descent hadn’t done him any good, and the younger man looked ready to pass out from pain.

Suddenly someone—Ayer—screamed. She’d been standing the furthest away from the tree, and some debris from the mudslide had managed to sweep her off her feet. Baatar caught glimpse of her flailing hand, then she was gone, carried down the hillside.

Kuvira swore. She shot one cable into the tree to anchor her, then leapt after her fallen soldier. The three remaining benders grit their teeth, now forced to shoulder the burden of the other two. Fortunately for them, the deluge seemed to lessen, the dam having spewed forth almost all its water.

“Can you see them?” Tanah asked anxiously, unable to  take her eyes off the mass of water she was bending away. Baatar peered cautiously over the root. Kuvira’s line was still taut, and he hoped that it meant that she had managed to grab Ayer. But there was no glimpse of either of them. His heart leapt to his throat, and with great difficulty, he shook his head. Tanah cursed, and even Bolin looked grim. The torrent of mud began to peter out, and with a loud grunt and outward pushing motion, the two earthbenders carved a channel partway down the hill—against Kuvira’s orders about destabilizing the ground, but at this point it didn’t matter anyway. It sufficed to keep the water away.

As the benders slumped tiredly, Baatar climbed carefully out of the shelter of the roots. The sodden ground squished and crumbled under his boots, and he ended up sliding several yards on his rear, but he finally reached the end of the still-taut cable, disappearing into the mud.

“Kuvira!” he yelled, and fell to his knees, plunging his arms into the dirt. The mud was like syrup, thick and goopy, oozing back into place every time he scooped back a handful. But beneath his fingers he could feel thin strands of hair in the mud, which meant they weren’t buried very deep. Unless it was some kind of strange root.

Please don’t be a root, Baatar thought, trying to keep his mind from spinning away into panic. He could hear someone else slide down to join him, and another set of hands dug in next to his.

Then his hand brushed against something rougher than the silky mud. Cloth! He grabbed a handful and pulled with all his might, and with a loud shlorping sound, a leg came into view. The boot, he recognized, belonged to Kuvira. “We have her!” he shouted, only to find himself with a mouthful of mud as what felt like the entire hill lifted itself off the ground and flung itself down the slope.

Baatar spat and sputtered, wiping mud from his glasses as he squinted at the sight of Kuvira crawling from the ground like an unholy mud monster. She pushed him away when he tried to slide over to her, croaking some kind of order as she pointed at the hole she’d climbed out of.

Ayer. The waterbender was unconscious, and as Bolin attended to Kuvira, Baatar hauled the other woman free from the mud. He quickly wiped her face clean, and panic began to mount when he realised she wasn’t breathing. Was it just the mud? Or had she been injured worse? He tipped her head back, opening her mouth to check for obstructions. Nothing, but of course that didn’t mean anything. What was it that he’d learned? Compressions, then rescue breaths. He had just placed his palms on Ayer’s sternum when a sudden shudder ran through her. Then she rolled over and vomited a stream of mud, water and bile all over his lap.

Baatar grimaced, but he carefully held the woman up and rubbed her back as she hacked and coughed all the water out of her lungs. Next to them he was aware of Kuvira doing the same, while fending off a concerned Bolin.

“You all right?” he asked Ayer, when her coughing finally eased off, and she could speak.

“I’ll live,” she rasped, and slowly and shakily climbed to her feet.

“Is everyone else all right?” Kuvira asked.

“Yeah,” reported Bolin. “We’re all right. Though we really, _really_ want to get off this hill. You don’t want to know _where_ I’ve got mud.”

“We’ve all got mud in places mud should never be,” muttered Zhuge, sliding down to join their group. He and Tanah had Hong Li propped up between them, minus the stretcher. Kuvira stumbled over to the wounded soldier.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked, her voice still scratchy.

“I’ve been better,” said Hong Li through gritted. “But can we please, please leave?”

“Of course,” said Kuvira heavily. She clambered to her feet and waved them down the mountain. “Let’s move out.”

Baatar directed Bolin to help out Ayer, and moved to Kuvira’s side.

“How are _you_ feeling?”

“Like a mountain fell on me,” she groaned.

“Well some of it did.” He noticed that she was moving oddly, keeping her left elbow close to her side. “You okay?” he asked

“I think I may have sprained my shoulder.” She rotated it slightly, then grimaced in pain.

“We’ll have the medics look at it back at the train.”

“The train?”

“Yes. Hong Li needs proper medical care, as does Ayer and probably you too.”

Kuvira sighed, but she allowed him to slide a supportive arm around her waist. “What about the rest of the camp?”

“I’ve had Corporal Batu bring the wounded, children and elderly back to the train,” Baatar said. “We’ll worry about the rest of refugees tomorrow. They’re dry, they’re fed, they’re alive thanks to you. They'll keep.”

She mmm-ed, briefly resting her head against his shoulder. Her hair had come completely lose, and fell over her shoulders in thick, mud-caked ropes. They all looked a sight. Baatar hoped their fellow soldiers wouldn’t attack upon seeing them walk into camp.

“What happened to your uniform, by the way?” he asked.

“Needed to make a splint for Hong Li,” she explained. “Then we kept getting weighed down by the mud, so we took them off. They’re probably...somewhere.” She gestured vaguely at the trail of debris the mudslide had left behind.

“Zhuge did raise that issue before we came up here.”

“Smart kid.”

“Mmhmm.”

Like some strange, addled, four-legged—and in one case, six-legged—beasts, they ambled into camp half an hour later, weary and caked with mud. Several soldiers ran out to meet them, weapons raised, and Kuvira pulled away from Baatar, raising herself to her full height.

“It’s me,” she said, voice commanding despite its persistent hoarseness. “Stand down.”

A chorus of shouts broke out among the troops.

“Commander!”

“We heard the dam break and saw the mudslide—”

“We were about to organise a rescue party!”

Kuvira held up a hand and they quieted. “Ayer and Hong Li need immediate medical attention,” she ordered. “See to them immediately, then prepare for transport to the train.”

As the soldiers rushed forward to help, she turned to the rest of the group. “You all should go too. Get yourself looked over, take a shower, and rest. You’re all given leave for tomorrow, use it to recover.”

“Aw yes!” crowed Bolin, looking cheered beneath his half-drowned appearance. “But what about you? You should come back to the train with us!”

“Yes,” agreed Baatar, trying not to sound overly solicitous. “You need to get your shoulder checked out.”

Kuvira scowled. “Leave us,” she demanded to the other three lower-ranking officers. Baatar caught Bolin trading glances with Zhuge, but they shuffled off with no complaints.

Once they were out of earshot she turned to Baatar. “I need to check up on the troops and the refugees,” she hissed.

He put a hand on her uninjured shoulder. “You need to rest too. I can take care of the camp.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“You don’t—”

“No, I trust you, I trust you,” she said reassuringly. “I just, I want to see if everyone’s all right.”

“They’re all right,” he said, rubbing her arm soothingly. “Everyone survived, we got the villagers out in time, and I think we might have some new recruits joining us after your heroic deeds.”

Kuvira snorted and raised an eyebrow. “Already pulling out the propaganda?”

“What propaganda? It’s patriotism, and our people want to help.”

“Fine.” She closed her eyes, and exhaled long and deeply. “I’ll go back to the train. Don’t get washed away in the meantime."

“I promise I won’t,” he said, absently pressing a kiss to her hair and tasting mud.

Kuvira laughed as he gagged and tried to wipe his mouth with the back of his equally muddy hand.

“Okay, I’m definitely going back to the train,” she said. “I just remembered: hot showers.”

Baatar thought of the barrels full of rain water that were going to be his method of cleanup at the camp. “Ugh, I’ve changed my mind, I’m coming too.”

“Too late,” she sing-songed. “You’re in charge now.” But she gave him a fond pat on the cheek and winked. “I’ll save you some hot water for tomorrow.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, there are waterbenders in my Earth Empire army. Imo Kuvira and co would be too pragmatic to discriminate in that regard, and I have a hard time believing the Earth Kingdom would be devoid of mixed race people capable of waterbending. Pretty sure some would be willing to help unite the kingdom, aka their home.
> 
> I'm also on the side of skepticism about the imprisonment of non-earthbenders as mentioned in the show; it came out of left field, made little sense, and imo only really works if it happens towards the very end of the campaign when we see Kuvira being consumed by her need for power and control. But as something that happened throughout the campaign...no.


	7. landing place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuvira wants to try something with her daemon. Baatar's a little more hesitant.
> 
> For the prompt _AU_ , hence, a Daemon AU.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the concept of daemons from _His Dark Materials_ by Philip Pullman. Daemons are the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self' that takes the form of an animal.

“No!” Baatar cried, tucking his hands behind his back and clasping his hands together for good measure. He leaned away from the hawk as far as he could. “I can’t.”

“Please, Baatar,” begged Kuvira. She thrust her arm out again, hard enough that Geng had to flap his wings to stay perched on her fist.

Baatar shook his head. He could feel Oubo coiling uneasily in the folds of his shirt. “I can’t take him. Mother said—”

“I give you permission,” said Kuvira. Her eyes shone with a feverish light as she took a step forward, arm still outstretched. Geng did not look as eager, sidestepping nervously on her clenched fist. His eyes never once left Kuvira’s face.

Baatar took a step back, and another and another, until he fetched up against the garden wall. “No.”

He hated to see the disappointment in her eyes, the brief flash of anger that he wasn’t sure was directed him or herself. In his shirt, he felt Oubo transform herself into something with many legs; she scuttled up and out through the collar of his shirt, and perched, now a dirt spider, on his shoulder. One of her eight legs brushed against his neck in comfort, before she turned into a hamsterrow.

Kuvira meanwhile had folded in on herself, dropping to a crouch in the sand. Geng left her fist, and flapped uncertainly over her shoulder but she batted her hand at him. With a huff the daemon flew over Baatar, who winced as he settled on the wall behind him with the unpleasant screech of talons on metal.

“I trust you,” she muttered to the ground, where she was rolling up a ball of dirt with a guiding finger.

“I–I—” stammered Baatar, unsure how to respond to that. He knew that she’d grown up differently, that wherever she’d come from with the rest of the refugees, things had been “bad”. But Kuvira was different from the other non-Zaofu children he encountered. She didn’t cry and talk about how much she missed home like some of the children, nor did she steal or pick fights like some of the ruffian kids he wished his mother had sent off to Omashu.

And then there was Geng, who had already settled, in the form of a goshawk no less. A bird was unusual for an earthbender, who had their daemons closer to the ground, their native element. Boar-q-pines, gilacorns, singing groundhogs, fire ferrets and the like. Some of the most powerful earthbenders, like his grandmother, had a badgermole as their daemon.

He hadn’t even recognized Geng as a daemon, the first time he’d seen him. The hawk had been perched on the awning above the entrance of the police station. He’d been amazed at its daring, to come some close to the presence of humans, then admired the colour on the hawk’s red-barred breast. Even Oubo had peeked out from his collar, her own curiosity aroused by his. Little attention was paid to the girl under the awning, until she spoke up.

“His name is Geng.”

Baatar’d blushed, embarrassed to be caught staring so unashamedly at someone’s daemon, and run after his mother into the station. He’d seen Kuvira again two weeks later, when he’d once again been roped in to help with the refugee children. “They’ll find it easier to talk to you than to an adult,” his mother had told him, pushing him into a room full of dirty, scrawny kids.

In the end, the only one who’d talked to him was Kuvira. The other children avoided her, wary of her unusual daemon, and her prodigious ability at earth and metalbending. His mother had marvelled, and had immediately made Kuvira one of her many “projects”. Opal liked her too, and Opal, though a silly little kid, was a fairly decent judge of character, he found. After all, she liked him best out of all her brothers.

Baatar let out a deep sigh and pushed his glasses further up his nose. “Fine,” he said.

Kuvira looked up from her now coconut-sized dirt ball, blinking rapidly. If she’d been any other girl, Baatar would have assumed she was holding back tears. It was probably dust. She clenched her fist, and for a moment he thought she was going to throw the dirt ball, but instead it crumbled back into earth and sand at her feet.

“You’ll do it?” she asked, an eager lilt to her voice.

“Yeah,” said Baatar. He look up over his shoulder at Geng, who cocked his head at him. Oubo flew up to the other daemon, matching his shape mid flight, though she took on the markings of the female goshawk, with yellow eyes and her barred breast a deeper red.

“Is this okay with you?” she asked, side-stepping over to him, pressing wing to wing.

Unlike Kuvira, who was watching them with shining eyes, Geng seemed more reluctant. But he ruffled his feathers, and his blood red eyes narrowed on his human. Kuvira gave a nod. A shudder seemed to travel through the hawk, and then he launched himself up into the sky.

Baatar tipped his head back, watching in awe as Geng climbed circles high above them. Sunlight lit the goshawk up from above, making the daemon seem almost otherworldly. He wasn’t sure how far Geng could fly from Kuvira before it started to hurt them both, but he was sure that they were pushing it. Then Geng dove, and Baatar remembered far too late that he had no idea how to hold a hawk. He stuck out his hand, then recalled Geng’s wicked talons and swiftly drew it back in again. Staying pressed up against the wall, he tried hard not to cower away. Out of the corner of his eye he was aware of a shadow blotting out the sun, then there were wings batting his face, hitting him far harder than he thought feathers could feel. Talons clamped over his shoulder, digging through the thin material of his shirt into the skin below.

Across from him, Kuvira remained crouched the sand. She had her arms crossed over her chest, nails digging into her arms. As he watched, a shudder seemed to run through her, one matched by the hawk on his shoulder. Geng was heavy, and the shudder shook Baatar too. He was grateful when Oubo leaped down from the wall, now in her favourite stoat form, to balance him out of his other shoulder.

“Are you okay?” she whispered into his ear.

“Yeah,” Baatar mumbled. He didn’t dare to turn his head to look at Geng, and besides, the couldn’t take his eyes off Kuvira. Having Geng on his shoulder, touching him, didn’t seem to hurt her, but from the way her fingers were digging into the flesh of her upper arms, just as Geng’s talons dug into Baatar’s shoulder, there was something going on. Geng himself seemed restless, and Baatar could feel the nervous tension in the hawk, a coiled energy that threatened to let loose any second. He feared for his shoulder, which was beginning to feel rather sore.

Then finally, Kuvira rose to her feet. She lowered her hands, and Baatar could see where her nails had dug into her skin, leaving red crescent marks behind on her bare upper arms. “Geng,” she called, her voice loud and clear, and with a last convulsive squeeze on his shoulder, the goshawk took off.

Geng’s departure was as explosive as his landing, knocking Baatar’s glasses from his face. His nose felt sore. The sudden lifting of weight from his shoulder sent him staggering, Oubo yelling in his ear as she clung on to his sleeve.

Upon regaining his balance, Baatar helped his daemon back onto a more secure perch on his head, and inspected the shoulder Geng had been on. There was no blood, thankfully, though red narrow dimples had been dug into his skin. But there were small tears in his shirt, which mother wasn’t going to be happy about.

Footsteps approached, and he looked up to see Kuvira, Geng perched on her shoulder. He sat there like a second head, calm and unruffled, not even needing to shift his balance when Kuvira stooped to pick Baatar’s glasses off the ground. She wiped them on the hem of her shirt, and passed them over.

“Thank you.” She sounded happier now, having gotten what she wanted. Baatar gave his glasses his own quick polish, and pushed them onto his nose. The feverish gleam in Kuvira’s eyes was gone, he noted. In fact, there was a calm about both her and her daemon that had seemed absent before.

“You owe me five of Mrs Hong’s red bean baos.”

“Five!” Kuvira exclaimed, and it was as though everything up to that moment hadn’t happened at all. “Mrs Hong won’t even give me two!”

She elbowed him playfully, and he elbowed her back. Geng, caught between them, grumbled, and Kuvira ducked her head so that he could sidestep across her shoulders to her other side. Oubo curled like across Baatar’s own shoulders like a scarf, and he reached up to stroke her fluffy tail.

“Just make those sad eyes at her again,” he told Kuvira. “Mom’s making chef cook kale and anchovy soup again, and I hate that.”

“I’ll try,” said Kuvira, sounding doubtful, but she marched off determinedly nonetheless, a target in her sights. Baatar, trailing slightly, looked back at the garden. They’d stirred up some sand, but it looked otherwise undisturbed.

Turning back, he caught Geng’s eye. The goshawk blinked lazily at him, then looked away. Remembering the daemon’s weight on his shoulder, Baatar reached up, closing his hand over fading talon marks, and squeezed.


	8. an empire for two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The paths of a Dai Li agent and an ambitious engineer cross. Who knows what's in store for the world.
> 
> Another AU, this time of "darkest timeline" variety.

To make her bend, they put her in a wooden cell. Bars on one end, and just out of reach, a plate of food. “Bend or starve,” says the man with the thin pale face. The smile on his face is kind, but his eyes are cold and calculating.

Kuvira lasts a day. She could last longer, has gone for days without food before, but the endeavor seems pointless. She knows now her parents aren’t coming back for her. Maybe they never wanted her to begin with. But the Dai Li have offered her food and shelter, even if they’re been cruel about it. The people fear them, but she’s beginning to understand the power of that fear. Maybe one day, they’ll fear her too.

*

“Try again, sweetheart,” his mother says. The meteorite flows through her fingers like water, but try as he might, Baatar can’t make his move an inch. The metal is inert in his hands, the ground is dead beneath his feet.

“Oh it’s all right, Junior,” she says, smoothing back his hair as tears of frustration prick the corners of his eyes. “It’s all right. You’re still my clever little man. Brilliant, just like your father.”

*

Training hurts. Training is being buried alive, it’s running twenty miles in the blazing sun, it’s spending days roasting and nights freezing in the Si Wong desert. Some of the other recruits die. Kuvira’s had to bury one of them, pushing dirt down six feet to lower the body. She can’t remember where that is, where the other girl is mouldering in an unmarked grave.

“Again,” her teachers say, and make her dodge another barrage of rocks.

They cut her mole out from under eye. Too distinctive, they say. A Dai Li blends in, remains unremarkable and unnoticed until it is time to strike. The wound heals nicely, barely leaves a scar.

She keeps training. She’s a prodigy, they tell her. Dirt reacts to her command, but the metals sings to her like it does to no one else. It’s almost like bending a part of her own body, moving outward, shaping itself to her will. Chan smiles at her with pride now, but his eyes remain hard and cautious.

*

Huan can bend. Wing and Wei start throwing rocks before they can even crawl. There’s only Opal who’s just like him, and yet not. His mother adores her because she’s her only daughter and so the absence of bending talent is forgiven. But Baatar is just Junior, smart, clever, innovative, but limited.

“Like this?” asks his mother, twisting her wrist, and in her hand is a replica of the gear he’d spent all morning machining. Not perfect, too smooth around the edges, but done in less than a minute. “A brilliant idea,” she says, and kisses his brow, “I can’t wait to see it.”

He spends the rest of the day running tests, comparing density, structure, strength of the bent and the tooled gear. It’s fascinating, and the original project gets shelved.

*

“Get up!” the boys jeer. They kick dirt in her face, and a steel-toed boot catches her in the ribs. It’s fine. She can handle this.

The ground is dead and her arms are numb, but she can still climb to her feet and kick at them. It’s not enough. They pile on her and it’s all she can do to remain curled in a ball, presenting as small a target as possible.

She still staggers in for breakfast the next morning. Over a bowlful of steaming congee that stings the cuts in her mouth, her eyes meet Chan’s. He smiles, and Kuvira knows this is a warning. She bends her head over her bowl and eats slowly, carefully.

*

His first explosion gives him a rush like nothing else. It takes the metal roof off the top of his workshop and his mother’s guards scurrying in like panicked rabaroos. They find him buried under a stack of pallets, splinters in his arms and glasses broken, but grinning from ear to ear.

“What did you think you were doing?” his father asks later.

Baatar shrugs. He wasn’t really thinking. It was just...fulfilling a need. This is a power few benders can control, but now he’s a step closer to mastering it.

*

“You will never get away with this!” His heart is a drumbeat against the soles of her feet. He’s already broken, he just doesn’t know it yet.

“I already have,” she says. “Besides, the Empress has been informed of your treason. She wishes to see you dead.”

Blood drains from his face. Later, when she’s done with him, she cuts his throat, and he turns paler still.

Traitors to the empire never live long, and this one has nothing more to give her. Kuvira wipes her blade on his green robe, and bends it back into her vambrace.

Once outside the filthy cell, she orders the body to be taken care of. Now that Chan is out of the way, she can get to work.

First thing, she’ll get rid of those stupid hats.

*

“What do you mean I’ve been summoned to Ba Sing Se?”

“Apparently the Empress has gotten wind of your experiments,” Huan says boredly as he reads through the scroll. Baatar looks up, pushing back his welding helmet.

“When do I have to be there?”

“Within the week.” Huan lets the letter spring back into a roll. “You know mom will never let you leave. You will be a hostage there, leverage to be used against her.”

“She needs to realise the world larger than Zaofu.” He picks up a wrench.

Baatar doesn’t put it past his mother to find creative ways of making him stay. He’ll apologise to Huan later in a letter. Hopefully the concussion will heal soon.

*

Thick glasses. Those ridiculous Zaofu robes and necklaces. A nonbender, an engineer and demolitions expert. Eldest son of Suyin Beifong, matriarch of the metal city of Zaofu, the only province yet to fall under the Empress’ rule. Also known for her anti-monarchical stance and isolationist politics, and strongly suspected of Red Lotus sympathies. Her son’s allegiances are unknown.

These are all the things Kuvira notes about Baatar Jr. Beifong as she leads him into the throneroom for his audience with Empress Hou Ting. Though his heart beats a tattoo against her feet, he seems unimpressed by the Empress’ power.

The only thing that seems to move him is his work.

They watch the mushroom cloud rise against the horizon. “Imagine this, but tenfold,” Baatar explains with a mirthless smile on his face. “We could annihilate the Red Lotus stronghold in days.”

The Empress is impressed. Later that evening, Kuvira is tasked to send an expedition to the swamp. To collect vines, of all things.

*

“Do you think this is how we will defeat the Red Lotus and their Avatar? Through sheer force of strength?”

It’s the woman, the one with the steely gaze and the long hair. She’s Dai Li, Baatar knows, but not the Dai Li of his grandmother’s tales. “You think it is insufficient?”

She snorts. “I think it too direct. Handling the Red Lotus requires subtlety. Which your weapons, no matter how impressive, lack.”

“The Red Lotus’ dogma has already spread to the fringes of the Earth Empire. The Fire Nation is in chaos with the assassination of their Fire Lord. A show of force is our best option for now.”

Her beautiful face is grim. “Deploying your weapon indiscriminately will lose us more ground.” She gets all up in his face now, but the blade in his side arouses him more than it scares him. “Go home to your mother,” she says, “stay out of politics you don’t know.”

*

Beifong is infuriating. He remains in the capital despite her threats, proceeds with his experiments despite her attempts at sabotage. Contrary to his scholarly appearance, the man has balls, reaching into the machinery to disable the malfunctioning weapons. The Empress had grown to like him, and that endangers Kuvira’s position.

But she cannot deny his attempts at flirtation are amusing.

It’s her job to remain on the periphery, to strike from the shadows, but this man always seems to know where she is. She’d almost suspect him of hidden earthbending abilities, but his status as a nonbender is clear.

Suyin Beifong send emissaries to the capital, stopping just shy of accusing the Empress of holding her son hostage. Kuvira sends back their heads. No words are necessary.

*

The assassins are quiet and light on their feet, but Baatar has lived all his life among dangerous metalbenders. He’s spent as much time dodging his brothers’ projectiles as he had holed up in his lab. The experience gives him enough time to dodge their first few strikes, and put some distance between himself and them.

When they finally get to him, he’s ready with a glass knife and a Sato Shockglove.

To cover all their bases, the Red Lotus have sent both a bender and a nonbender after him. Clever. He can take one down, but not the other, unless he can get to his mecha on time.

He barely dodges a flurry of ice daggers only to have to leap over a sweeping kick. But the nonbender is careless, gets too close, and soon gets a knife between his ribs and a glove to his face for his troubles. The waterbender gives a shout of rage as her compatriot goes down, and then another of agony as metal cables suddenly punch through her chest.

“You’re popular,” Kuvira says as she reels her cables in, flicking blood across the floor.

“It’s my natural Beifong charm,” he jokes, putting a hand to his side. It comes back dark with blood; what he’d thought was a stitch in his side has turned out to be glancing blow from a blade.

She nods at the blood soaking through his shirt. “You think you’re charming enough to make me help you with that?”

Baatar wants to say something about her eyes, but the world goes dark. Later he wakes up in her cot, neat stitches in his side. Apparently Kuvira found his passing out charming enough.

*

She could have killed him, or left him to die. But she hadn’t.

Kuvira doesn’t let herself think she’s gone soft. Beifong’s useful to her, that’s all. Just a tool for her to use, she tells herself as she climbs into his bed one night. He’s surprised, but pleasantly so. Men are so predictable.

The experiments and weapons development continue. Kuvira stops getting in his way, and starts coming by observe his progress.

She doesn’t report the assassination attempt. Let the Empress think she’s got the Red Lotus cowed with her show of force. Kuvira has other, better plans in store for the Empire.

*

He’s never quite sure how much of it is seduction, and how much is some kind of twisted fondness, but he’s willing to play along for now. She’s useful to him, especially since the Empress doesn’t seem interested in his work beyond shows of force. He starts developing side projects, moving his focus to smaller, projectile based personal weaponry. Such a weapon in the would make even a nonbender a formidable foe, and they’re far subtler than bombs, which makes Kuvira happy.

Baatar’s no idiot. He knows he’s being manipulated. They’re both using each other, and he’s not quite sure what Kuvira’s end to his work is. But he’s willing to wait and see.

Kuvira is a cold, sharp thing, and he’s bound to cut himself upon her. But Baatar decides he doesn’t mind it. Pain has always been a part of his success.

*

When Zaheer and his Avatar come to Ba Sing Se, Kuvira takes Beifong and takes her agents, and retreats deep into the crystal catacombs. The Empress dies and the city falls into chaos. It’s not a perfect plan and there’s plenty that can go wrong but Kuvira’s patient. Soon the people will tire of their anarchy and lawlessness, and look to a new leader. She’ll be ready for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm kinda garbage at this "compressed timeline" kind of story. I just wanted to expand and elaborate on every little thing.


	9. Crazy Rich Beifongs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boy meets girl. Boy dates girl. Boys asks girls to come home with him. Shenanigans ensue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last AU! It had to be done. I know lots of people fancast Michelle Yeoh as Lin, but imo she'd make a better Suyin.

“Nonono, Baatar, that’s mine!” Kuvira pulled the plate out from under his wandering fork, over to her end of the counter. “Get your own!”

“I’m just having a bite!” Baatar said. His expression was pleading, but his fork hovered threateningly like Kyoshi’s fans.

Kuvira waved her hand at what was left of the demolished fruit tart. “That’s hardly a bite, you menace. Get your own. In fact, you know what–” she handed him back the plate. “Take this. I’m getting another.”

Baatar smirked as he dug back into the dessert and Kuvira ordered a second from the barista.

“So I’ve been thinking…” he began, when a fresh fruit tart was placed in front of her. Kuvira hunched over it protectively.

“Keep talking and stop stealing.”

“Um, yeah.” Baatar took a sip of his coffee. “How would you feel about a trip up north?”

Kuvira raised an eyebrow as she savoured the buttery crust, the smooth custard and the sweet fruit. Hong’s did have the best fruit tarts. “The north pole?”

“Not that far north.”

“Ba Sing Se?”

“No, not there either.”

“Upper RC? The Yellow Mountains?” She forked up a blueberry. “Be a little more specific, Baatar, the north can mean anything, including upstairs if you’re trying to be cute.”

Though he chuckled, the way Baatar took off his perfectly clean glasses and polished them on the hem of his sweater told her he was nervous. “More northeast I guess. More like Zaofu.”

The last forkful of tart had been halfway to her mouth, but Kuvira set it down again. “Zaofu?”

“Yes,” said Baatar. He peered through his glasses, made a face and started polishing them with a napkin. “Varrick’s getting married, and he’s asked me to be his best man. And since you and I’ve been dating for over a year now...”

A strange feeling was bubbling inside her chest, and Kuvira put her hand over her mouth to hide how she was smiling like a loon. Baatar, having fought the war against his glasses and finally won, took her free hand in both of his own.

“Look, you’ve always talked about visiting Zaofu, even before we started dating. Isn’t this the best time? We can stay for an extra week after the wedding, and you can visit that crazy friend of yours while you’re there.”

“You mean Korra?” Kuvira’s grin widened at the thought of the friend she’d made during her university days.

“Mmm, yes, her.” Baatar nodded, though his thoughts seemed to be going in another direction. “And I finally get to show you off to Varrick. He keeps going on and on about his amazing fiancée and how she does _all of the things_ for him–” His voice rose an octave higher and he pulled his hands away to twirl them in imitation of this Varrick. “But wait until he meets _you_.”

“So this is a contest?” Kuvira said dryly.

“You’ll crush him,” said Baatar, smiling at her as he took her hands in his again. “All shall love you and despair.”

How dare he sit there and quote _The Lord of the Rings_ at her like the giant dork that he was, while her pulse fluttered under his fingers like dying butterflies. Kuvira rolled her eyes.

Neither of them noticed the well-dressed woman in the corner, taking a misaligned photo of her kiwi pavlova.   


* * *

“There’s a bar in first class?” Kuvira hissed, trying not stare at the flight attendant manning the counter that stretched down the center of the plane. There was something incredibly jarring about being in plane and not surrounded by crammed economy seats, stressed passengers and crying toddlers.

“Hmmm?” asked Baatar absently, as he scrolled through something on his phone. “Oh, they didn’t have those when I was a kid.”

“Ah,” said Kuvira, nodding just to avoid looking as out of place as she felt. Then the implications of what he’d said sank in.

“Since you were a kid? How long have you been flying first class?”

“Uh, a while?” He started typing furiously, still only half paying attention. The attendant leading them to their seats smiled a bland, polite smile at them even when Baatar bumped into her.

Kuvira grabbed the collar of his shirt, yanking him back. “Watch where you’re walking! Sorry,” she added to the woman, who gave her nod and then ushered them to...a cabin?

“Um,” began Kuvira, but Baatar was already slipping through the door.

Following him in seemed to be the only course of action. After all, how ridiculous would it be to kick up a fuss about being in first class? Even though it felt like she’d just fallen through a spirit portal, Kuvira sat down, put away her bag, and waited with ever decreasing patience for her boyfriend to finish his silent conversation. Finally, it ran out, and she snatched the phone away.

“Kuvira!” Baatar snapped. He immediately swiped it back, though he thankfully put it face down on the table–an actual table and not a fold out tray–and looked up at her. “What’s going on with you?”

“You said you had travel points!” Kuvira hissed. She gestured at the plush seats that would have fit two economy ones, at the table and the 32-inch television screens, at the silk pajamas that had been tucked away in a little hidden closet. “This, you don’t get this with _points_!”

Baatar coughed. “So I may have left out that part where my parents have business with the airline.”

All she could do to that was mouth a silent “What?”

Baatar picked up menu. It looked like something that had come out of Kwong's Cuisine, only fancier. “Oh look, they have dim sum!”

Dim sum on a plane. And here she’d been anticipating flash heated pasta and soggy chicken. Hopefully falling asleep against Baatar’s shoulder and not her other neighbour’s. Body odour, and leg cramps, and noisy children and all the things she usually associated with flying. Kuvira looked down at her lap, where she’d absently started stroking the silken pajamas. Baatar had turned the menu over, and was pouring over the whiskies.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, voice low. She felt foolish now for allowing the constant misdirections and changes of subject. She hated people digging into her own past, and so had respected whatever boundaries Baatar had set up, but this here had blindsided her. She viciously squashed down any feelings of betrayal that welled up.

“I didn’t want to you think any different of me,” said Baatar. To his credit, he looked a little ashamed of himself. “Besides, this whole time you’ve known me, I’ve been living of my own money. This,” he gestured around the opulent suite, “is just on my mom’s insistence. She bought the tickets. I would have been happy to fly home on business, or even economy plus.”

Kuvira raised an eyebrow. “You let your mom buy your tickets?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, she insisted. She was very excited to hear I was coming back. I’ve been away for quite a while.”

“Didn’t you go home last year?”

“Oh you know, Earth Kingdom moms.” He scratched his neck. “You’re never quite free of their claws.”

“Hmmm,” said Kuvira, unsure how to respond to that. She’d been adopted as a child, then un-adopted at eight, and raised in foster homes until she’d successfully filed for emancipation at sixteen. Baatar knew the earlier parts of the story. She now felt relieved for not telling him everything.

“So who else does your family do business with?” she asked, walking her fingers up his thigh. His squirm was a welcome distraction to the thoughts clamouring in her head.

“Um...well, you know my dad’s an architect.”

“Yeah.”

“And uh…” he tugged at his collar, “There’s some financial stuff, and real estate, and um, spirit vine power.”

Kuvira’s eyes widened and her hand stilled, but Baatar didn’t seem to notice and rambled on. “You know my brother Huan’s an artist–” she did, she’d met him at an exhibition in Republic City, and he’d been weird in a way she generally expected artists to be so _that_ hadn’t been a red flag– “then there’re the twins, Wing and Wei, they’re power disc champions, they’ve represented Zaofu several times in the Five Nation Games. And there’s my sister, Opal.”

He smiled at some fond memory. “If I had to have a favorite sibling, it’d be her. She’s probably the most down-to-earth of my family. You’ll like her. She runs a lot of charities, and she’s married to that actor, Bolin. In fact,” he puffed up his chest as he recounted the incident. “She actually met him through me. Starred in one of Varrick’s movers. He plays a lot of dumb action heroes but in real life he’s a nice guy.”

Feeling a little overwhelmed at the sudden deluge of information after a year and more of nothing, Kuvira lay back in the soft, giant seat, pressing the cool silk of her pajamas to her face. “And they all know about me?”

“Of course!” Baatar reached over and brought her hand to his lips. “And they’re all really excited to see you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fact that Zaofu is basically fictional Singapore with its social engineering, monitoring of citizens, and meritocracy never fails to amuse/depress me.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read, kudos-ed and commented. I discovered and fell for this pairing about the same time Baavira Week was announced, and boy has it been a trip. Thanks for sticking around! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Vienna Teng's song of the same name.


End file.
